The Bangui Wind Farm, officially referred to as the NorthWind Bangui Bay Project,

evoked from a 1996 wind resource analysis and mapping study of the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL). It concluded that various areas in the Philippines are ideal for wind
power installation in which the town of Bangui is one among them.
In 1998, the Danish government sponsored the project by a 48-million-dollar grant where
the NorthWind Power Development Corporation is accredited to develop, maintain and operate
the wind farm while the Danish firm, Vestas Wind Systems, which powers most of Denmark’s
own wind farms, supplies the wind turbine generator units (WTGs) for the site.
As of today, the NorthWind Bangui Bay Project completed two of its three phases. The
Phase I, costing 23 million dollars, contains 15 Vestas wind turbines generating a total of 24.74
mW was completed on May 7, 2005 and was inaugurated on June 18, 2005. The project
produced a 5% discount of the weighted average price in the wholesale electricity spot market
(WESM) one year after it started operating. Furthermore, the Ilocos Norte Electric Cooperative
(INEC) electricity consumers saved an approximate of 70 million pesos as an advantage of
having the wind farm. Another 5 wind turbines were later added in 2008 for Phase II, increasing
the plant’s total generating capacity to 33 mW. The windmills supply 40% of the province’s
needs as its generated electricity is transmitted to an electrical substation in Laoag City
connected to the Luzon grid.
The Bangui Wind Farm is considered to be the biggest wind farm in Southeast Asia and
the first in the Philippines containing wind turbines on-shore facing the South China Sea. This is
one of the major projects of the province of Ilocos Norte as it promotes eco-friendly power
sources and at the same time being self-reliant in terms of its energy sources. The Bangui Bay
Project is considered as one of the lowest carbon emission footprints within the Asian developing
countries as it reduces approximately 56,778 tons of CO2 on a yearly basis in which they are first
Philippine recipient of the Carbon Emission Reduction Certificates (CERs) from the Executive
Board of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change.