MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CFK opens Argentina’s largest wind farm in Patagonia: 80MW

The farms take advantage of the windy climate

President Cristina Fernandez opened Friday in Patagonia the largest wind farm in Argentina. The Rawson Aeolic Park will eventually generate 80 MW sufficient to supply 100.000 homes according to the private investors.

Located almost 1.500 kilometres south of Buenos Aires in windy Patagonia, the farm so far has 27 Danish built turbines, with a 50MW capacity and another 16 to be installed in the first half of next year will total the 80MW with an overall investment of 144 million dollars.

“Diversifying the Argentine energy grid is a strategic mid and long term task for Argentina”, said CFK during the opening ceremony.

The Rawson experience will be complemented with a second park in the Patagonian tourist centre at Puerto Madryn, and once both are fully operational “Argentina will have one of the major wind power poles in South America”, said Carlos Serrano, spokesperson for Emgasud, the company involved in the enterprise.

CFK said that another 34 projects involving renewable energy are in process totalling 910 MW with an investment of 2.1 billion dollars.

According to the World Wind Energy Association, WWEA, energy from renewable sources in 2010 increased 23% globally. Wind energy totals 196.630MW with Asia clearly leading, 54%, with China alone representing half the effort. Europe follows with 27%; North America, 16.7%; Latin America 1.2% and Africa, 0.4%.

In spite of the poor global performance South America individually is advancing: Chile has 23 wind farms projects finished or in process; Uruguay plans to reach 30% of its power needs with wind by 2020; and Brazil is developing three huge Aeolic parks in the north east of the country.