GE Energy: Romania will attract further giant wind power investments
Autor:
Roxana Petrescu
16.09.2009
GE Energy, the energy equipment division of General Electric,
says the next few years will see more contracts signed of similar
value to that which won the company the right to deliver wind
turbines for the 1.1 billion-euro CEZ wind farm in Dobrogea (SE
Romania).
"If we consider the two stages of the CEZ wind farm taken
together - it can be regarded as one of the most important
contracts sealed in Romania so far," says Rod Christie, president
of GE Energy for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS.
GE Energy has recently won a contract to deliver 101 wind
turbines for the farm that CEZ will be building in Cogealac, with
the Americans also winning the first stage of the auction, which
consisted in the delivery of 139 turbines for the farm in
Fantanele.
According to company representatives, the first part of
the contract was worth 600 million dollars (around 410 million
euros), with market sources saying the Americans will receive
around 300 million euros for the second part.
The farm that the Czechs will make operational in 2011, and
which will be capable of generating 600 MW, will be Europe's
largest onshore wind farm.
"Around 100 GE employees and subcontractors, from service
technicians to project managers and engineers, are present in
Fantanele, working on the construction stage currently underway.
They come from countries such as Germany, Brazil, and the US, where
our plants are, but also from Romania," says the GE Energy
representative, adding that the group will also build a service
centre close to the two wind farms in Fantanele and Cogealac.
"At present, less than 1% of Romania's energy is wind-generated. At the end of 2008, Romania had a 10-MW installed wind power capacity out of the around 65,000-MW overall installed wind power capacity in the EU," says Christie. According to European statistics cited by the GE Energy representative, it is precisely this lack of investments in wind power that creates the premises for future contracts with a similar value to be concluded between CEZ and GE Energy.