U.S. exports will expand wind energy in Honduras

Gamesa Wind US, LLC, a technology firm based in Trevose, Pennsylvania, will manufacture and export six each of its high-efficiency model G87 and G-97, 2.0 MW wind turbines to generate electric power in rural Honduras.

Gamesa operates two facilities in the U.S., a blades factory in Ebensburg, near Johnstown, and a nacelle plant outside Philadelphia. In 2011, Gamesa was named Ex-Im Bank’s “Renewable Energy Exporter of the Year.”

Other U.S. exporters involved in the project will also benefit.

They include engineering contractors, financial and legal advisors, and represent jobs in the states of Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas.

The Cerro de Hula Wind Farm now produces about six percent of the electrical power in Honduras.

With the additions from this transaction, the wind farm will have 63 wind turbines and a total installed capacity of 126MW providing power to the national electric utility.

Two hundred Pennsylvanian workers will assemble twelve high-tech wind turbines for export, because the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) approved a $28.6 million direct loan to a Honduran power company.

The transaction helps to expand a project first supported by the Bank in 2010, when its long-term financing of 51 U.S.-built turbine generators established the Cerro de Hula Wind Farm in Santa Ana municipality, 22 km south of Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras. As the Export-Import Bank of the United States said, the project developer and borrower, Energ