ACCIONA puts a completely renovated wind farm into service in Spain

ACCIONA Energía will complete the start-up phase of the wind farm in the last week of 2018, fourteen months after having started removing the old wind turbines. The lattice tower turbines -with a capacity of 330 kW each and between 24 and 36 metres in height- have disappeared to give way to modern turbines of Nordex Acciona Windpower technology. Eight of them are the N100/3000 model, of 3 MW capacity each and a hub height of 85 metres, while another four (AW70/1500) will have a capacity of 1.5 MW and a hub height of 60 metres.

The disassembly of the old wind farm involved removing all the foundations, platforms, unnecessary accesses and 31 transformers, plus the withdrawal and management of the waste generated and the recovery of the landscape.

The repowering project involved the adaptation of the access track, the remodelling of roadways inside the wind farm, the construction of the foundations for the new wind turbines, the laying of cables for the installation and the adaptation of the substation and control building.

The project has also included the restoration and revegetation of the areas affected by the building work through planting, sowing, hydro-sowing and recovery of embankments.

The renewal process has meant a major improvement in terms of the wind farm’s environmental impact on the surroundings. As the number of turbines has decreased 7.5 times, the wind farm’s visual impact has also fallen, as well as the levels of noise. These benefits are also facilitated by the superior technology of the wind turbines.

Likewise, the greater distance between turbines -between 170 and 300 m in the new facility as opposed to an average between 45 and 65m in the old one- makes it much easier for birdlife to fly through, and the slower rotation speed of the blades also means less risk of collision.