This week’s WindEnergyUpdate news brief includes: REpower appoints new CEO; Boralex secures new funding; Vestas issues Eurobonds; Elia and IFM to acquire German grid; RWE npower renewables seeks forest permits; AWEA refutes FERC regulation; Wales to double RE output; Narec opens offshore wind training tower;Trico Marine Group secures new contract; the results of Nebraska Wind Integration study; and the FERC approves rates for proposed Tres Amigas project.

REpower appoints new CEO

German wind technology company REpower Systems has appointed Andreas Nauen as its new chief executive officer.

Nauen, will be leaving his role as CEO of Siemens Wind Power, to replace Hornung Pedersen as REpower’s CEO from October this year. Nauen joined Siemens in 1991 and was appointed CEO of Siemens Wind Power in 2004.

Pedersen will retain his position as an executive board member and is to move into the new role of chief business development and business strategy officer. He will remain in the role of CEO until Nauen takes up his new role.

German conglomerate Siemens, in the meanwhile, has appointed Jens-Peter Saul as the CEO of its Wind Power Business Unit headquartered in Brande, Denmark.

Until now, Saul was managing director of Siemens Energy in the U.K. and also responsible at energy for north and west Europe.

Boralex secures funding

Québec, Canada-based independent power producer Boralex has secured financing of CAD$191 million for the construction and operation of its Thames River wind farm in southern Ontario.

It has refinanced phase I (40 MW) of the Thames River wind farm and obtained financing for phase II (50 MW) at the same site.

The financing is being underwritten by a consortium of Canadian life insurance companies, formed and headed by Manulife Financial Corporation.

The total amount involved is CAD$191 million, about 76% of the total investment, including initial financing costs, interest payable during the construction period, working capital and contingencies.

The funds will be used to finance the second phase of the 90MW wind farm and to refinance Phase 1. The first phase involved the construction of four of nine 10MW wind farms, which were commissioned in January. The remaining five 10 MW farms are under construction and scheduled to be finished by December.

With this funding, Boralex will complete Phase II without additional equity investment requirements, freeing up CAD$12.5 million. The loan will be amortized over 21 years, at a rate of 7% for the entire period.

The power produced by the Thames River wind farm will be sold to the Ontario Power Authority under the Advanced RESOP programme.

Vestas places inaugural Eurobond transaction

Danish wind turbine maker, Vestas, has placed Eurobonds worth €600m with a five-year maturity. Vestas’ inaugural transaction in the debt capital market marks the first Eurobond transaction by a pure play wind power systems supplier.

Henrik Nørremark, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Vestas Wind Systems, said that the response underlines Vestas’ access to a broad variety of capital markets, allowing Vestas to further optimise and diversify its funding structure in favour of longer-term borrowings at attractive terms.

The bonds will be issued on 23 March 2010 and will be repaid on 23 March 2015. They will be listed on the official list of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange.

The bonds will be placed by Nordea, Rabobank, Societe Generale and UniCredit acting as joint lead managers and bookrunners and SEB as joint lead manager, according to a report filed by Reuters.

Elia and IFM to acquire German grid

Belgian electricity grid operator Elia System Operator and Australian infrastructure fund Industry Funds Management (IFM) are to jointly acquire the German regional transmission system operator 50Hertz Transmission GmbH (50Hertz) from Vattenfall Europe, a unit of Swedish state-controlled Vattenfall AB.

The value of the grid is €810 million and the parties expect to complete the transaction for 50Hertz in the second quarter of 2010. The transaction is subject to approval by European Union and German authorities.

IFM will own 40% of 50Hertz and Elia will own the remaining 60% stake with operational control. Elia will finance the transaction through a capital increase.

The 9,700km high-voltage network will add to Elia's grid operations in Germany, France and the Benelux countries and the company said it was a step towards an integrated European electricity market.

The transaction is the second cross-border electricity grid sale announced in Germany in three months. Earlier this year, E.ON AG completed the sale of its German power transmission grid to Dutch electricity operated network operator TenneT TSO BV.

Elia and IFM will honour Vattenfall’s investment commitments, allowing 50Hertz to fulfil German and European legal obligations. These commitments include the construction of interconnectors and line extensions which are a prerequisite for the reliable transmission of electricity primarily generated by wind turbines in low consumption coastal areas to high consumption regions further inland.

RWE npower renewables bids for forest development rights

Renewable energy project developer RWE npower renewables has been awarded the rights to seek planning permission to develop two wind farms in the Brechfa Forest in South West Wales. The location is woodland and is managed by Forestry Commission Wales on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.

The proposed projects would be located within the county of Carmarthenshire, between 11km and 20km south/south-west of Lampeter and between 12km and 23km north east of Carmarthen.

The firm’s studies show that the Brechfa Forest West Wind Farm, centred around the Afon Pib valley, can accommodate 28 turbines. The Brechfa Forest East Wind Farm, centred around Banc Llywelau, can feature 12 turbines.

The smaller Brechfa Forest East Wind Farm will be submitted as a Town & Country Planning Act application to Carmarthenshire County Council for its consideration.

The Brechfa Forest West Wind Farm, with an installed capacity of over 50MW, will be considered by the newly created independent body, the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), that came into operation on 1 March 2010, with a remit to consider applications for ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects’ - including large wind farms.

AWEA refutes new FERC regulation

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) says the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s  (FERC) conditional approval to a proposal by Westar Energy, a public utility with a transmission system located in Kansas, is flawed.

Westar’s proposed Balancing Agreement and Schedule 3A will allow it to charge for and provide generation regulation and frequency response services to generators located in Westar’s balancing authority area (balancing area) whose output is delivered outside Westar’s balancing area or to the SPP energy imbalance market.

According to AWEA, the approval would in effect take millions of dollars from wind generators connecting to its system to subsidise the utility’s other operations.

This flawed order, unless corrected on rehearing, sets a precedent that would add significant new costs to renewable energy nationally, pointed out senior vice-president for Public Policy Rob Gramlich, AWEA.

“We are surprised and disappointed that FERC would approve, without even an evidentiary hearing, a proposal that discriminates against renewables and assesses charges well above their costs,” said Gramlich.

The utility is under the functional control of Southwest Power Pool, which includes Kansas and Oklahoma, most of Nebraska and parts of New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas.

Wales could double RE output by 2025

The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) has stated that Wales has the potential to produce nearly twice the amount of electricity it currently uses, through wholly renewable sources by 2025.

This comment came from Environment Minister, Jane Davidson, at the launch of the WAG’s new Energy Policy Statement, A Low Carbon Revolution.

The Energy Statement details how Wales has the potential to produce twice the amount of electricity it currently uses from renewable sources by 2025. Roughly 40% could come from marine, a third from wind and the rest from sustainable bio-mass power or smaller projects using wind, solar, hydro or indigenous biomass.

The strategy sets out the WAG’s ambitions to accelerate the transition to a low carbon energy economy in Wales through a three-tiered approach which focuses on maximising energy savings and efficiency, moving to resilient low carbon electricity production via secure indigenous renewable forms of energy such as marine, wind, water and biomass, and ensuring that the transition to low carbon energy maximises opportunities for practical green jobs and skills.

Narec opens first training tower for offshore wind

The U.K.’s New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) has opened the U.K.’s first Wind Turbine Training Tower in Blyth, Northumberland.

The 27-metre training facility is the result of a collaborative training partnership, backed by Regional Development Agency, One North East, between Northumberland College, Mainstream Renewable Power and Narec. 

It is an open access facility, designed to allow education and training providers to deliver academic and industrial training programmes for technicians working in the wind industry and at height, both onshore and offshore.

The training tower will help to ensure that the students on the wind technician training programme at Northumberland College are trained to British and European industrial standards.

Trico Marine Group bags new contract

CTC Marine, the subsea protection subsidiary of Trico Marine Service, has won a contract from Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke GmbH (NSW).

The contract covers the offshore renewable installation, trenching and connection of approximately 80 inter array cables on the BARD Offshore 1 Wind Farm Project in the North Sea.

While the exact value of the contract was not disclosed, Trico Marine Group’s subsea services company, DeepOcean, was awarded a long-term frame agreement for subsea services with a major oil firm in Norway. The combined value of the two contracts is worth around US$40 million.

AWEA welcomes Nebraska Wind Integration study

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has applauded a groundbreaking study, which found that Nebraska and the other states in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) region can reliably obtain 40% of their electricity from wind energy while incurring only minor costs associated with altering the existing power system

The wind integration study, funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, examined how the power system would operate in scenarios in which 10%, 20%, and 40% of the electricity was supplied by wind energy in Nebraska and the SPP region.

A 40% wind energy penetration is one of the highest levels studied thus far in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world.

Moreover, the study also found that the cost of operating the power system differently to accommodate wind energy was modest, although exact integration costs varied depending on the methodology used to account for the costs.

According to the AWEA, the study emphasised that large amounts of wind energy can be reliably integrated onto the grid at low cost.

One method found costs ranging from $1.39 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of wind energy in the 10% wind case up to $1.68 per MWh of wind energy in the 40% case.

A different method was applied only to the 10% and 20% wind cases and found costs of $1.92/MWh in the 10% case and $3.11 in the 20% case.

A third method revealed costs of $3.21/MWh in the 10% case and $4.29/MWh in the 20% case.

Still another method looked at the unlikely scenario that SPP customers would be assigned the cost of accommodating the variability of wind energy exported to other regions and found higher integration costs. 

SSP includes Kansas and Oklahoma, most of Nebraska and parts of New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Arkansas.

FERC approves negotiated rates for Tres Amigas Transmission Project

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has granted Tres Amigas LLC’s request for authorization to sell transmission services at negotiated rates for service on its three-way transmission station in New Mexico.

The Tres Amigas hub is intended to link the nation’s three transmission grids and to provide consumers with greater access to renewable resources.

In a separate order, FERC declined to disclaim jurisdiction over prospective transmission facilities to interconnect the station and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), saying it did not have the information necessary to grant Tres Amigas’ request.

Tres Amigas had asked FERC to disclaim jurisdiction over potential transmission facilities that would cross the Texas/New Mexico state line and interconnect with ERCOT facilities. ERCOT facilities historically have been exempt from FERC jurisdiction.

However, the Commission stated that upon receipt of a valid application under Federal Power Act sections 210 and 211, it would allow Tres Amigas to proceed and interconnect with ERCOT without conferring FERC jurisdiction over ERCOT utilities.

Tres Amigas is planning a three-way alternating current/direct current transmission interconnection superstation in Clovis, N.M., which would link the Eastern Interconnection, ERCOT and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, and which could allow transmission of significant amounts of power between the regions.