Energia plans to increase its renewable energy portfolio by 268MW this year, making it Ireland’s largest purchaser of renewable energy produced by wind farms in 2011, according to new figures from the Irish Wind Energy Association.
The vast majority of this, 243MW, will derive from 26 new Irish wind farms that will become operational this year. This equates to 68pc of the total new electricity generated by Ireland’s wind farms this year.
In 2010, 115MWs of new generating capacity from Irish wind farms was connected to the national grid, more than 40pc of which is in Energia’s portfolio. This year, this figure is predicted to increase to about 400MWs, according to figures from the Irish Wind Energy Association.
Peter Baillie, managing director, Energia Renewables, commented, “In response to the growing number of Irish businesses asking for green power, Energia’s renewable power portofolio is set to grow by 268 megawatts (MW) this year – 25MWs will come from our Energia wind farms and 243MWs will come from new wind farms all over Ireland. This makes us by far the biggest purchaser of new wind power capacity in Ireland.”
“We have signed a large number of power purchase agreements (PPAs) with new wind farm developments all over Ireland, including locations in counties Carlow, Cork, Donegal, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick, Mayo, Roscommon, Tipperary and Wexford.
“In addition to these PPAs, Energia already runs a large number of its own wind farms throughout Ireland in locations such as Donegal, Roscommon and Sligo. The company is also in the final stages of developing new wind farms in Caherdowney, Co Cork, Meenadreen, Co Donegal, and Hollyford, Co Tipperary.
“We also recently raised a €72m in financing for our latest group of renewable projects, bringing our total wind farm financing to €115m in the last two years.
“At the moment we are very focused on expanding our renewables business. We are one of the top suppliers of ‘green’ power to businesses in Ireland. We have 300MWs of operational capacity at the moment and will be increasing this by another 540MWs over this year and next.”
