Chinese and U.S. Developers Team Up to Build 600 MW Texas Wind Farm
The Shenyang Power Group (SPG), a Chinese company, announced a joint venture with a group of U.S. companies to develop a $1.5 billion, 600 megawatts wind farm in West Texas that will use Chinese-made wind turbines.
The project will largely be financed by tapping credit facilities from Chinese banks as well as cash grants administered by the U.S. Treasury Department. The news is yet another indication of the growing clout of the Chinese cleantech sector, which, backed by a robust domestic market, is now looking to expand abroad and in particular in the U.S.
Supplying the wind turbines is an outfit called A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese supplier of distributed power generation systems that only recently entered the wind turbine business.
A look at A-Power’s Website shows that it’s building its wind turbines with technology licensed from European and U.S. companies.
Other Chinese cleantech companies are looking to expand into the U.S., including PV manufacturers Yingli Green Energy and Suntech Power, which have announced plans to build U.S. manufacturing facilities partly funded by government monies.
Commenting on the the project, A-Power Energy Chief Operating Officer John Lin praised the Obama administration’s generous cleantech subsidies, reports The New York Times. “This wind farm project came about thanks to the openness of the United States for investments in the field of renewable energy,” he said.
The wind farm will be developed on 36,000 acres (14,568 hectares) in West Texas, and will use 240 of A-Power Energy’s 2.5-megawatt turbines, marking the first time Chinese-made turbines are exported to the U.S.
Construction on the project is expected to begin in March 2010.
Other partners include U.S. Renewables Group United States Renewable Energy Group, the veteran cleantech-focused private equity firm and Cielo Wind Power, a large Austin-based wind project development company.
