Enel Green Power (EGP) has started construction of its first wind farm in Uruguay. Called Melowind, it is located in the Cerro Largo area, about 320 kilometres from the capital, Montevideo.

With 50 MW of installed capacity, the wind farm, once completed, will be able to generate more than 200 million kWh of power a year, avoiding the atmospheric emission of more than 62 thousand tonnes of CO2. Melowind will have a load factor of more than 47%, equivalent to more than 4,100 hours of generation a year.

The new wind farm will involve a planned investment of about 98 million US dollars.

The electricity produced by the new wind farm will be sold to UTE (Administración Nacional de Usinas y Trasmisiones Eléctricas), the state company for the transmission, distribution and sale of electricity in Uruguay, under a 20-year power purchase agreement that has already been signed.

“The start of work on the Melowind plant, together with the opening of EGP offices in the country, mark our entry into the promising market of Uruguay, a country with abundant natural resources, rapid economic and demographic growth and a stable regulatory framework”, said Francesco Venturini, Enel Green Power CEO – "These characteristic represent the drivers of our growth strategy, which is based on technological and geographical diversification and provides for us to enter one or two new high-potential markets each year.”

Uruguay has an installed capacity of approximately 2.9 GW, with about 62% of output generated from renewable resources. In 2010, the Uruguayan government disclosed its "National Energy Policy 2030", which is intended to diversify the country’s energy mix, expanding the use of local resources and increasing private-sector participation in the power generation industry.