Acciona Energy and the Costa Rican society Ecoenergía Group have started a commercial wind farm operation near Chiripa, in the Tilarán area.
The wind energy plant will be inaugurated in November and will have a capacity of 49.5 Megawatt (MW) (33 wind turbines of 1.5 MW each).
Laurent Mugica, of Acciona Energy, announced that the investment of wind energy development in this wind farm is a total of $125 million.
“The wind farm has been built after the award for the consortium of the purchase contract of energy from a wind farm of up to 50 MW by the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE). The electricity that generates the park will be sold to ICE through a 20-year contract,” explained Mugica.
Acciona participates with 65% in the development company of the wind farm and in Ecoenergía Group – which develops and operates clean energy facilities – with 35%.
The wind power facility is located in the town of Tilarán, a site of high wind resource, allowing the wind farm to generate more than 200 million kilowatt hours (kWh) annually, a production equivalent to the consumption of 80,000 homes and it will avoid the emission of about 192,000 tonnes of CO2 in coal power plants to the atmosphere.
The materialization of the Wind Farm Chiripa supports wind power development in Costa Rica – which closed in 2013 with 249 MW cumulative – and contributes to the strategic objective of Costa Rica´s administration to reduce the country´s carbon footprint.