The wind farm will be built and owned by Catamount Energy, a 50:50 joint venture between the two companies, which developed the project along with Force 9 Energy. The wind farm will consist of consists of 29 turbines and will be located on the slopes of Carn Kitty and Carn Ghiubhais, approximately 12 km south of Forres.

Statkraft and Duke are also working together on several more wind farm projects and have applied for consent for two wind farms on the UK mainland. A third wind farm that was developed as part of the partnership, Blaengwen wind farm in Wales, is now fully owned by Statkraft and is currently under construction.

“This is our second consent in Scotland and we are excited about the opportunities we see in the wind energy sector here as we look forward to investing in many more renewable energy schemes in Scotland,” says Statkraft UK Managing Director Eivind Torblaa.

Duke is one of the US’ largest power generators. It currently has around 500 MW in wind generation capacity, which will grow to 700 MW by the end of 2009. State owned Statkraft is Europe’s largest renewable energy generator, largely through 142 hydropower plants in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland and the UK. It operates three wind farms in northern Norway and is participating as part of the Forewind consortium in the UK Crown Estate’s Round III offshore wind farm tender.