Enel North America, Fortis in 10-year wind deal

New York's Fortis Merchant and Private Banking today said it signed a 1.1 million megawatt, 10-year power purchase agreement with Enel North America.

The deal is for fixed price energy from Enel's Snyder Wind Farm in Texas.

"The agreement with Fortis is an important component to the success of the Snyder Wind Farm," said Enel North American chief operating officer Toni Volpe.

The 63 megawatt project is nearly complete, according to Fortis. It consists of 21 Vesta V90s turbines.

Snyder is Enel North America's largest wind farm, but the company expects to wrap up construction on a larger, 101 MW wind farm in Kansas later this year.

Fortis' agreement with Enel begins in 2008 and runs through February 2018.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Fortis said today's deal is its second large transaction with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which handles the deregulated power industry for most of the state.

Fortis Merchant and Private Banking is part of Belgium insurance and banking company Fortis.

Enel North America, which operates over 400 MW of wind, hydropower, geothermal and biomass projects, is a unit of Italy's Enel, that country's largest electric utility.

The company currently has active project in 20 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces.

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