OilVoice - REpower UK Wins Contract With E.ON

REpower UK Wins Contract With E.ON

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

REpower UK has won its first contract with E.ON in Britain and will ‘repower’ an old wind farm with new, high specification turbines, increasing the electricity generated almost three fold.

Great Eppleton, a four turbine project near Sunderland, north east England was commissioned in 1997 with twin bladed turbines which will now be replaced.

REpower will install four new MM92 turbines with a combined rated power of 8.2MW which will produce enough electricity to power more than 5000 homes annually. This is a major increase from the previous levels of energy produced by the twin bladed turbines at 3MW of capacity, or electricity for 1300 homes.

Rick Eggleston, managing director, REpower UK, commented;
“The practice of repowering old wind farms is predicted to increase as wind farms installed in the mid-late nineties are simply no longer competitive. It’s much more economical to replace these and going forward they will produce a far better return on investment.

“Great Eppleton is a very exciting project because the results of the upgrade will be so dramatic in terms of efficiency and delivery.”

E.ON has now removed all four turbines in advance of installation work commencing in the autumn. The turbines should be turning in February 2010 with REpower due to complete its work on site in spring of that year. Gary Simmonds, project developer at E.ON commented;

“We are looking forward to working with REpower on this development. It is an excellent location for a wind farm and through the repowering project we hope to improve the site and its potential for wind energy even further.”

It’s the second time REpower UK has been commissioned to repower a wind farm following their work at Caton Moor for Hainsford Energy four years ago.

The new contract with E.ON is the second major win for REpower this month, following news that they have been granted the first onshore wind farm contract tendered by EDF Energy Renewables. Despite the global recession, REpower is operating to target and expects to continue its upward curve towards 400 MW live by the end of March 2010.

Great Eppleton is located approximately 1 kilometre to the east of Hetton-Le-Hole and approximately 9 kilometres to the south west from the centre of Sunderland. In June 2007, the company received planning approval to repower the site and then a tender process selected REpower UK as the successful manufacturer.

REpower UK is the third largest supplier of wind energy in Great Britain. The award winning company, founded in 2003, has a team of 60 people based in Edinburgh and across the UK. The company recently celebrated installing 300 MW of energy since the business began. This has been delivered through 22 onshore wind farms in Scotland, England and Wales, and one offshore wind farm, Project Beatrice in the North Sea, which installed two 5M turbines, one of the largest offshore wind turbines in the world. The combined energy created powers 168,000 homes per year.

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