STEAG subsidiary Mingas-Power moves forward with mining heap wind power project

Essen/Moers. Boulders and craters as far as the eye can see – on a plateau at the Kohlenhuck mining heap in the north of Moers, the project partners Mingas-Power, ENNI Energie & Umwelt Niederrhein (ENNI) and RAG Montan Immobilien (RMI) have now officially put the Kohlenhuck Wind Farm into operation. Mingas-Power, a joint venture between STEAG New Energies and RWE Power, holds 33 percent of the shares in the four wind turbines which are up to 190 meters in height. The total capacity of the wind farm is 12 MW. In future, around 32 million kilowatt hours of green electricity are to be generated here each year, corresponding to the consumption of 9000 households in the region. For Mingas-Power, this is already the third wind farm on former mining heaps: Oberscholven in Gelsenkirchen-Buer and Lohberg in Dinslaken are now joined by Kohlenhuck in Moers.

The three directors of the special purpose company ENNI RMI Windpark Kohlenhuck GmbH, Uwe Bruckschen (ENNI), Ulrich Porath (RMI) and Gerd Wagner (Mingas-Power), symbolically pressed the red button last Friday together with Christoph Fleischhauer, the Mayor of Moers, to start up the wind turbines. The three partners have invested around 20 million euros in the four wind turbines which range up to 190 meters high in front of and on the mining heap of the former Friedrich-Heinrich mine – “a location,” according to Gerd Wagner, “which symbolizes the politically driven changeover into the age of renewable energy sources more than any other on the Lower Rhine.”

Mingas-Power mining heap wind farms with local partners

 In a pilot project in November 2010, Emscher Lippe Energie (ELE) and the STEAG subsidiary Mingas-Power erected two large wind turbines with a total of 4.6 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity at the highest point in Gelsenkirchen, the 140 meter high Oberscholven mining heap. The operator of the plant is ELE Scholven Wind GmbH, in which ELE holds 30 percent of the shares and the STEAG subsidiary Mingas-Power GmbH 70 percent.

The second mining heap wind power project by Mingas-Power with a 3 MW wind turbine then went on line in February 2016. The operator is Windkraft Lohberg GmbH, a joint project company owned by Stadtwerke Dinslaken, Mingas-Power and RAG Montan Immobilien GmbH.

 The Kohlenhuck project with four wind turbines and an installed capacity of 12 MW is the third mining heap wind power project by Mingas-Power to be performed successfully together with local partners.