IBERDROLA and Neoenergia, via the Força Eólica do Brasil consortium, have awarded Gamesa a contract to supply 42 state-of-the-art wind turbines to the three wind farms being developed by the two companies in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in North-Eastern Brazil.

Gamesa is to install G114 wind turbines, with a unit capacity of 2 megawatts (MW) at these wind farms. To be more specific, it will be in charge of supplying, transporting, installing and commissioning 15 wind turbines for the Santana 1 wind farm, a further 15 for the Calango 6 facility and 12 more at Santana 2.

The consortium formed by IBERDROLA and Neoenergia in the wind power sector has strong links to Gamesa, having already entered into agreements to supply a total of 372 MW in Brazil.  

These 42 turbines will be manufactured at Gamesa's factory in the Brazilian city of Camaçari. They are expected to be installed in the third quarter of 2016. The wind farms will be connected to the grid in the last quarter of the same year.

The G114 wind turbine is a new model that is particularly suited to the high-wind and low-turbulence conditions encountered in Brazil. Gamesa has committed to supplying some 800 MW of these machines worldwide in various agreements and orders. 

Brazil is one of IBERDROLA's priority markets in the renewable energies sector. In fact, the company now has a total of 17 wind farms in this country, with a combined capacity of 511 MW. These include facilities already in operation and others that are under development and construction, following the power auctions won in recent years.

By the time all of these wind farms are in operation, IBERDROLA will be supplying energy from renewable sources to some 770,000 Brazilian homes, thereby avoiding some 800,000 tonnes of  CO2 emissions into the atmosphere each year.

The company's presence in the Brazilian wind energy market has expanded very quickly because the majority of the facilities it operates there were built in the last few years. The only wind farm that dates from before 2010 is the Rio do Fogo facility, which was commissioned in 2006 and is 100% owned by IBERDROLA.

This new agreement confirms Gamesa as IBERDROLA's leading supplier in the wind power business.  Of the company's 14,000 MW installed capacity worldwide, around 9,000 MW are produced by wind turbines manufactured by this supplier.

IBERDROLA's operations in Brazil

IBERDROLA has been operating in Brazil since the year 1997 via its 39% stake in the Neoenergia holding, with local partners Banco do Brasil (12%) and Previ (49%) and distributors Coelba, Celpe and Cosern. In 2011, it also closed the deal for the merger of another Brazilian distributor: Elektro.

This made it the leading electricity distribution company in Brazil in terms of the number of customers, as it already caters for some 40 million people.

IBERDROLA also has major operations in the area of electricity generation in the country, where it manages an operational capacity of about 2,000 megawatts (MW). Most of these facilities are hydroelectric power plants and wind farms and they produced almost 10,100 GWh in 2013.

The Group is also behind the construction of a further 13,400 MW in hydroelectric capacity with three new projects: the Teles Pires (1,820 MW), Baixo Iguaçu (350 MW) and Belo Monte (11,233 MW) power plants.

IBERDROLA has a staff of around 9,000 employees in Brazil, where it plans to allocate €1.1 billion between 2014 and 2016, mostly in the areas of generation and networks.

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