Wind advisory firm targets Africa

Wind Prospect, the international renewable energy developer and adviser, is to open a new office in Cape Town in October 2010. The office will serve the entire African market and will provide wind resource assessment, due diligence and development support services to developers, banks and financial institutions.

Announcing the launch, Wind Prospect said it was aiming to become the leading service provider to the African wind market by 2012. The firm is currently working on 11 contracts across Kenya and South Africa with 1.3 gigawatts of “potential capacity”. This would represent a big increase on the continent’s 770 megawatts of wind capacity installed to date.

“Africa is set to become a major international market for renewables,” said Wind Prospect head of advisory services David Groves in a statement. “South Africa in particular has huge coal reserves but is making great progress to reduce its fossil fuel reliance and turn to alternative ways of generating energy.”

While focusing for now on the “financial capital” of Cape Town, Wind Prospect said it planned ultimately to offer additional services and open further offices in Africa.

Since launching its developer services business last year, Wind Prospect has opened offices in emerging markets including Turkey and Poland. It also has offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Ireland, the UK and US.