Wind-powered stadium breaks record

johannesburg - danish wind turbine constructor vestas sees more wind power growth in south africa as the country embraces renewable energy solutions.

"vestas sees southern africa – and south africa in particular – as key emerging markets for us and as leaders in the development of wind energy in africa," said vestas central europe president hans jörn rieks on tuesday.

"south africa has made a solid commitment to a clean energy future and we want to build strong and constructive partnerships with customers, government, the energy industry and the sustainable development community to develop a sustainable wind industry," said rieks, marking the opening of vestas first office in south africa.

vestas worked with belgian green energy company electrawinds to deliver the south africa's newest wind turbine at coega.

the coega turbine will have an immediate impact on clean energy generation in south africa; it will reduce co2 emission by 3.7 tons every year and will produce an estimated 5.7 million mwh of clean energy every year – enough for over 2 400 south african families.

the electricity generated by the turbine has been donated by electrawinds to the nelson mandela bay soccer stadium in port elizabeth.

this means that the stadium will be running on green power - a first for the world cup in south africa.

the turbine forms part of a massive r1.2bn project, which will see 25 turbines erected by 2012.

"electrawinds and vestas are both writing history with this wind turbine: it is electrawinds' first project in south africa and the first joint project here with vestas," said electrawinds director of business development jan dewulf.

"it is also the start of what we hope will be the first commercial wind farm in this country," dewulf said.

he said the turbine was also completed in record time.

from the signing the contract it took around 100 days for the turbine to be ready to produced energy.

construction of a turbine of this size would usually take about 18 months