Gamesa, a world leader in the design, manufacture and maintenance of wind turbines, will supply 60 wind turbine generators from its G8X-2MW platform starting in April 2011, and will also provide operation and maintenance services for the next ten years.
Jeffrey J. Ciachurski, CEO of Western Wind Energy, said his firm chose the Gamesa G8X-2.0 MW platform “because of its robustness and excellent performance, considering also that there are over 9,200 MW installed worldwide”.
Western Wind Energy Corp., which is headquartered in Vancouver, British, Columbia (Canada) recently announced that it had as closed a $249 million financing and received a commitment for an additional $26 million to be funded on or before September 30, 2011 for the Windstar facility, the company’s largest-ever project in the US.
The financing also includes a 21-year construction and term loan, a bridge loan to the ITC Cash Grant from the US Department of Energy and some vendor financing.
The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company (Manulife) and its US Division John Hancock Financial Services (Hancock) led a group of institutional lenders, including The Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada (Sunlife).
This is Gamesa's first contract with Western Wind Energy Corp., which has additional wind power projects underway in California and Arizona in the US, and Ontario (Canada).
All the turbines, which are specifically designed for high temperature, will be installed on 67-metre towers. Gamesa will also supervise construction of the wind farm, to commence immediately. Western Wind Energy has a 20-year agreement to supply electricity to Southern California Edison.
“This agreement is a first with an important new customer, Western Wind Energy, and will strengthen our footprint and leading position in the US market,” said Dirk Matthys, CEO of Gamesa for North America.
Gamesa has been operating in the US since 2005, and the country already accounts for 22 percent of its annual wind turbine generator sales; it has two manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania employing over 800 people and with production capacity of over 1,000 MW/year.
The company said it expects to steadily increase its presence and sales in the US by 15 percent annually between 2009 and 2013.
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