Germany's largest solar company is going over to the windy side of cleantech in a big way in Australia. Conergy announced a 1 gigawatt wind farm project for New South Wales.

The company's Epuron unit plans to start work on the .8 billion project in 2009. "Our wind monitoring equipment north of Silverton in western NSW has revealed an amazing wind resource which will power between 400 to 500 wind turbines when completed," said Martin Poole, executive director of Epuron.

When complete, the wind farm could generate enough electricity to power about 400,000 homes. An equivalent size project is being built by a consortium offshore in the U.K. Construction of the London Array is also set to begin in 2009

New South Wales is aiming to get 10 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2010. The federal government proposed a target in September of 15 percent by 2020.

"We are proceeding with this project on the assumption that the state and federal governments will legislate in the interests of developing Australia's renewable energy industries, providing current and future certainty for projects like Silverton," said Poole.

The development of the site will happen in stages, with the first stage involving up to 150 2 megawatt turbines.

Conergy, which already has about 15 percent of the solar energy market in Australia, said the Silverton wind project is part the company's plan to expand in the Asia-Pacific region.

The company hopes to have 50 percent of its business outside of Germany, with 50 percent from non-solar, by 2008.