GE Renewable Energy secured a firm order to supply 30 Cypress turbines to a wind farm in Brazil, its second for the platform in the country but the first to see local production of its largest onshore machines.
The turbines will be used to expand by 150MW the Serra da Babilônia wind complex in Northeastern Brazil owned by Rio Energy, the Brazilian unit of US investment fund Denham Capital. Serra da Babilônia already has 223MW of operating capacity.
GE said the turbines, with capacities of 4.8MW and 5.1MW, will be the first Cypress machines manufactured in Brazil, with locally-assembled nacelles and blades from GE-owned LM Windpower, which also has a plant there.
This is the second order for GE’s largest onshore platform in Brazil after France’s EDF Renewables ordered 25 Cypress machines for a 132MW project in October.
With Danish OEM Vestas leading – it has more than 2GW of orders for its 4.2MW V150 machine in the country – the six OEMs active in Brazil are contesting a 1GW plus annual market with larger turbines launched since 2017.
Alongside GE, Nordex Group, Siemens Gamesa, Enercon and local OEM WEG have been marketing machines larger than 3MW over the past two years and are upgrading facilities to localise production that's currently geared up to produce 2MW turbines.
Vestas and Siemens Gamesa have already obtained local content accreditation for their larger platforms from the National Development Bank (BNDES).
According to the BNDES, GE has also obtained accreditation, but has to fulfill several remaining conditions.
