RWE Renewables' East Raymond (Raymond) facility, a 200-megawatt (MW) onshore wind farm located in Willacy and Cameron counties, Texas, has achieved commercial operation.
"We're excited to announce our 27th onshore wind farm in the U.S. and our eighth project on the Texas Coast," said Silvia Ortin, Chief Operating Officer North America. "We're also very happy to be delivering clean, low-cost power for the next 30 years while helping Austin Energy achieve its renewable energy goals."
A 12-year power purchase agreement with Austin Energy for offtake from the project was announced in August 2019.
"We currently offset more than 60 percent of our customers' energy needs with carbon-free resources," said Austin Energy General Manager Jackie Sargent. "The Raymond Wind Farm in South Texas coming online brings us closer to meeting our climate protection goals adopted by the Austin City Council and championed by our customers."
Raymond came online in late December finalizing the project without any lost time safety incident.
The project is powered by a total of 91 Vestas V120 and V110 - 2.2 MW turbines and generates power for more than 60,000 households
North America is one of the focus markets of RWE, with a strong development pipeline in the renewables business. The installed capacity in the U.S. accounts for more than one third of the Group´s renewables capacity. As one of the largest renewables players worldwide RWE plans a net global investment of €5 billion from 2020 through 2022. Project partnerships have the potential to increase this expenditure considerably to € 8 – 9 billion.
RWE constructs, owns and operates some of the highest performing wind, solar and energy storage projects in the U.S. As an established leader in renewables, RWE has recently entered into a joint venture, New England Aqua Ventus, focused on floating offshore wind in the state of Maine.
For more information, go to RWE.
PDF
