Isra-Mart srl : Google piles another $100m into renewables with wind farm mega-deal

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Isra-Mart srl news:

Google has continued its recent run of multi-million dollar renewable energy investments, shelling out $100m to acquire a stake in a next-generation wind farm project in Orgeon.

The company announced yesterday that it has purchased a stake in the 845MW Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, which is scheduled to come online next year.Shepherds Flat will cost $2.3bn by the time it is completed, $1.4bn of which will go to GE as part of a deal that will see the engineering giant supply 338 2.5MW turbines that use permanent earth magnets, rather than the traditional electrical coil-based motors. Shepherds Flat is the first project in North America to use this design which, according to its supporters, creates more power density per turbine.

The project, which will stretch over 30 miles, will also create 400 temporary jobs and 35 permanent jobs.

When operational, it will generate 1,798,000 Mw/hours per year, which equates to 60 per cent of the output of an average-sized US coal plant.

However, the site, which was supposed to have been operational this year, has been the subject of controversy. In April 2010, the US Air Force eventually dropped its opposition to the project after voicing concerns that it would create radar interference problems.

Other investors in the project include Citi, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, RBS Securities and WestLB Securities, while Inc. Sumitomo Corporation and Tyr Energy came in with Google on the latest funding round.

This month has been Google's most active to date in terms of renewable energy investments. The latest deal follows last week's announcement that the company had ploughed $168m into BrightSource's Ivanpah thermal solar project in California, as well as news that a further $5m has been invested in a German solar PV plant.

The latest deals bring the search giant's total renewable energy investment to $350m, meaning that this month alone has seen three quarters of Google's total renewables investment.