Poland - RWE Innogy grows wind energy portfolio by 108 megawatts

After less than one year of construction, RWE Innogy commissions its new wind farms Piecki and Tychowo in Poland. The Piecki wind farm in the northeast of Poland was developed and built by Gamesa. The 16 wind turbines (G90-2.0MW) have an installed capacity of 32 megawatts to produce over 60,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

The electricity produced here is enough to meet the equivalent demand of over 30,000 residential households per year and to avoid 60,000 tons of CO2 emissions. RWE Innogy acquired the project together with energy utility HSE, based in Darmstadt, which owns a minority share of 49 percent.

The Tychowo wind farm located in Western-Pomerania has an installed capacity of about 35 megawatts and consists of 15 Siemens turbines (SWT-2.3-93) each with a capacity of 2.3 megawatts. It can produce over 65,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year. The electricity generated here is enough to meet the equivalent annual demand of over 32,000 residential households and to avoid 65,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

"Poland is a particularly attractive market for us when it comes to operating onshore wind power plants. This is because of the remarkable wind resources, the large growth potential and the cooperation opportunities with our sister company RWE Polska. This is why we intend to go ahead with the development of additional Polish wind farms in the next few years", explains Paul Coffey, Chief Operating Officer at RWE Innogy.

Since October 2009, 18 turbines each with an installed capacity of 2.3 megawatts have been in operation at Suwalki and supply 40,000 residential households with electricity. With Piecki and Tychowo, RWE Innogy now operates three wind farms in Poland. Together with the Suwalki wind farm, the company has an onshore wind portfolio of over 108 megawatts here.

"The boom for renewable energy, which we are experiencing now in Poland, leads to new challenges for the entire energy sector", says Filip Thon, CEO of RWE Polska. "These two new RWE investments will more than double the Group's wind capacity in Poland. RWE Polska is one of the first energy companies in Poland to offer "green energy" to business clients. The newly launched product is sought after especially by companies focusing on sustainable development."

According to the Polish wind energy association, almost 1,100 megawatts of wind power had been installed in Poland by September 2010. The Polish government intends to grow the installed capacity to 6,100 megawatts by 2020. Power generation from renewable energies is subsidised in Poland by a system of "green certificates" in order to achieve this aim. Electricity suppliers are obliged to offer a certain percentage of the energy fed into the grid on the basis of renewable energies. They can exempt themselves from this obligation by purchasing "green certificates".

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