KfW-Ipex has funded a wind farm in Uruguay with a US$79.5mn loan.

The borrower is French company Akuo Energy who will use the loan to fund the 42MW Minas project. 80% of the loan is guaranteed by the Danish export credit agency EKF and 14 wind turbines will be provided by Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems.

The farm will be Uruguay’s second largest and will generate 176GWh of electricity per year – enough to power 40,000 homes.

The project is in the country’s Lavalleja region and marks KfW-Ipex, the commercial arm of Germany’s development bank’s first loan to Uruguay’s wind power sector.