Italy's Enel wins wind farm projects in Brazil

Enel Green Power, the renewable energy arm of Italian giant Enel, has won three wind farm projects totalling 193 megawatts in Brazil's 2011 New Energy Auction, the company said in a statement Friday.

The estimated total investment for the three projects is approximately 330 million euros (476 million dollars).

The company described the deals as "a significant step forward in the deployment of its growth strategy in Latin America", and said the projects were expected to be operational by 2014.

The three wind farms, located in the northeast of Brazil in Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco and Bahia, "will be able to generate up to 770 GWh per year, enough to serve as many as 500,000 households in Brazil," the statement said.

According to Enel, the demand for power in Brazil is growing at an annual rate of approximately five percent.

"This is an important step forward in our strategy to develop high quality projects in a fast growing and competitive market environment as the Brazilian one," Enel Green Power head Francesco Starace was quoted as saying.