Acciona Energia, a subsidiary of Spanish renewable energy company Acciona has started the construction of 183MW wind farm in Chile.
The San Gabriel wind farm is located 5km east of in the municipality of Renaico, near La Araucanía, around 550 km south of Santiago de Chile.
It will use 61 of Nordex’s AW132/3000 wind turbines. The wind farm will generate enough clean energy to be supplied to more than 270,000 Chilean homes.
Acciona claims that each of the wind turbines is powered by a 132m diameter rotor on concrete towers with a hub height of 120 meters. It also claims that the towers are reinforced with anti-earthquake technology.
Power generated from the wind farm will help Acciona in covering the 506GWh of electric power awarded in a public tender from the Chilean National Energy Commission (CNE) in last August.
As per the Spanish company, the towers will be manufactured locally in a provisional plant near the site. This model is expected to benefit the local economy and create indirect jobs in the region.
Construction of the wind farm is expected to create at least 510 jobs and after the completion, about 15 permanent jobs will be created, for operations and maintenance.
Acciona Energía Chile general manager José Ignacio Escobar said: “It is with great satisfaction that we announce the start of building work on a new renewables facility in Chile, demonstrating Acciona’s commitment to the country through concrete actions and our solvency and reliability when it comes to materializing projects that help to create an ever more sustainable energy system in our country.”
The wind farm is scheduled to start operations in September 2019. Once operational, the wind farm can help in avoiding at least 632,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum, had the energy been generated from coal-fired power plants. It is equivalent to the cleaning effect on air with the presence of 31 million trees.
Image: Acciona to construct its second wind farm in Chile. Photo: Courtesy of Acciona.