ACCIONA Energia announced this week that it will build its ninth wind farm in the United States with the development of the 145 megawatt (MW) Palmas Atlas wind farm in Texas, its second wind farm in the Lone Star State.
San Roman Wind Farm in Texas
Image Credit: ACCIONA Energia
ACCIONA Energia, the renewable energy subsidiary of Spanish infrastructure company ACCIONA, announced on Tuesday that it would build its second wind farm in Texas, the 145 MW Palmas Atlas wind farm located in Cameron County, situated close to ACCIONA’s other Texas wind farm, the 93 MW San Roman wind farm that was commissioned in December of 2016.
The Palmas Atlas wind farm will need an investment of around $200 million and will be built using 46 Nordex AW125/3150 wind turbines, with expected completion in November of 2019. In addition to the 524 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of clean energy the project will generate annually — the equivalent of enough electricity to power 43,000 US households — the project will also employ around 170 people at the peak of construction and provide employment for 10 people to maintain operations. Further, ACCIONA Energia predicts that Palmas Atlas will generate $40 million in tax revenue over the span of its lifetime, as well as more than $44 million in lease payments to local landowners.
“We are proud to undertake a new wind power project that consolidates the reactivation of our investment activity in the United States and confirms our commitment to grow in a controlled and profitable manner in a market that continues to offer very interesting opportunities for the renewables sector,” said Rafael Esteban, CEO of ACCIONA Energy USA Global LLC.
Upon completion, Palmas Atlas will increase ACCIONA Energia’s wind power capacity in the United States up to 866 MW, with three other wind farms in Oklahoma (329 MW), two in the Dakotas (192 MW), one in Illinois (101 MW), and one in Iowa (6 MW) — not to mention a 64 MW concentrating solar power in the Nevada Desert. ACCIONA Energia also boasts an unnamed pipeline of projects which will continue to increase its presence in the US.
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