Green light for Bt37-bn wind farm projects
Wind Energy Holding (WEH), a member of the KPN Group and one Southeast Asia’s leading renewable energy companies, today announced that it has successfully closed financing for five of the company’s onshore wind farms totalling 450 megawatts.
The investment for all five projects will total Bt37 billion. When complete, by the first quarter of 2019, the five wind farms will add to WEH’s existing 270MW of operating capacity.
WEH said that all of the financing was fully arranged and wrapped by Siam Commercial Bank (SCB). Financial close for the five projects comes on the heels of the commissioning of the Company’s 60MW Watabak project in December 2016, which was also financed by SCB.
The wind farms, located in Northeast Thailand’s Nakhon Ratchasima and Chaiyaphum provinces, will be supplied by both Vestas and General Electric (GE). Vestas, will supply 60 of their V136-3.0 MW turbines which will be the first of their kind in the Asia Pacific region. With a hub height of 157 metres, they will also host the tallest towers in the region to date. GE will supply 90 of their GE3.43-137 turbines with an innovative steel-concrete hybrid tower. GE Power will also construct six new substations as part of the grid infrastructure being built for the projects, WEH said.
The projects have started construction and are expected to achieve commercial operations over the course of the second quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2019. Upon completion, WEH will have developed and constructed 720 MW of onshore windfarm capacity in Thailand, making it the single largest wind power developer and operator in the country and Southeast Asia.