UPC Renewables, an affiliate of Italy's UPC Group, is to build a 40-turbine wind farm in the Philippines at a cost of about $480m (£287m).
Development on the 80MW project, to be located in Pagudpud town in northern Ilocos Norte province, is to start by end of the year, with the first wind turbines to be erected by early 2010.
UPC managing director Troels Carstensen told the local Business Mirror newspaper that project financing will be provided by European export credit agencies and Philippine banks.
Carstensen said UPC hopes to reach an agreement with the Ilocos Norte government to provide electricity to nearby residents and also neighbouring provinces.
UPC Group already operates 700MW of wind turbine generators in Italy and 300MW in the US. UPC Renewables operates the group's business interests outside of North America.
The Pagudpud wind farm will be the second in Ilocos Norte province, following a 33MW facility in nearby Bangui Bay that was established in 2004 by NorthWind Power Development Corp, a joint venture by Filipino and Danish businessmen.
It is the country's first commercial on-grid wind farm, providing about half of the province's electricity needs and is verified as a clean development mechanism project under the UN’s CDM executive board.
Denmark's Vestas Wind Systems provided the equipment for the Bangui Bay farm, which cost about $44m to build. Most of the funding was provided through a Danish International Development Agency grant.
A 2000 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory - part of the US Department of Energy - estimated that the Philippines had the potential to generate up to 70GW of energy from wind power.
The Philippine government hopes to have between 200MW and 400MW of installed wind power capacity by 2015.
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