Iberdrola has begun commissioning the 195 MW Tâmega Norte wind farm, a sprawling onshore project straddling the municipalities of Cabeceiras de Basto and Montalegre, between Braga and Vila Real in northern Portugal. According to Iberdrola’s own statement and confirmation from Renewable Watch on 18 May 2026, the wind farm is now in start-up, making it the first half of a wider 314 MW Tâmega Complex that will become the largest grid-connected wind-hydro hybrid project in the Iberian Peninsula.
The engineering heart of the project is Danish. Tâmega Norte is built around 27 Vestas V172-7.2 MW turbines, each with a rotor diameter of 172 metres — among the largest onshore machines Vestas currently delivers anywhere in Europe. The combined nameplate capacity is 194.4 MW, with annual output projected at roughly 414 GWh, enough to supply about 128,000 Portuguese households with renewable electricity.
The investment numbers anchor the scale. Iberdrola has confirmed total TOTEX of €346 million for the two-park Tâmega Complex: €237 million for Tâmega Norte and a further €109 million for the still-under-construction Tâmega Sul. CO₂ emissions avoided across the complex are projected at more than 230,000 tonnes per year — equivalent, in Iberdrola’s framing, to the annual emissions of approximately 100,000 vehicles. Output from Tâmega Sul, when commissioned, will add another 185 GWh on top of Tâmega Norte.
The Vestas V172 platform is a 4 MW-class onshore turbine optimised for medium- and low-wind sites, with the 7.2 MW variant a step up the IEC class system. It is one of the platforms Vestas has positioned at the centre of its turnaround narrative after the difficult 2024 period for European wind OEMs. Penetration in Iberia matters: the Iberian Peninsula has historically been a Vestas market, but recent years have seen aggressive competition from Siemens Gamesa, Nordex and Goldwind. Securing 27 V172 machines on Portugal’s flagship wind project signals that Vestas is still the default choice for premium developers with long-cycle commitments.
Why the wind-hydro hybrid matters. Tâmega is not just a wind farm. It is connected to a 1,158 MW pumped-storage hydroelectric complex along the Tâmega river — Gouvães, Daivões and Alto Tamega — one of the largest hydro storage developments in Europe in the last quarter-century. Wind oversupply can be used to pump water uphill into the upper reservoir, and that same water can later be released through turbines when wind output is low. In effect, the V172 fleet has a 1.1 GW “battery” behind it — without the chemistry. For Nordic infrastructure investors watching Iberia, this is the kind of integrated, dispatchable renewable asset that closes the gap between cheap variable generation and grid-firming services. It is also the template Stegra, Greenvolt and Nordic offtakers have all sketched out in their public-facing investor materials.
Locally, the project also illustrates how Portuguese permitting and grid capacity questions are now downstream rather than upstream of project economics. Tâmega Norte received its grid connection point early and integrated the existing hydro infrastructure rather than competing with it — an approach that Brussels has explicitly endorsed in its push for hybrid renewable projects under the Renewable Energy Directive. The challenge for the next wave of Iberian wind projects will be replicating the hybrid logic on smaller, distributed sites without the benefit of an in-place 1 GW hydro asset.
The Nordic-Iberian read. Vestas is one of two Danish industrial champions — alongside Ørsted — that have become permanent fixtures in Portuguese energy investment debates. Today, with 27 V172 turbines spinning above the Tâmega valley and another 14 V162 units already turning at Hyperion’s smaller Alentejo hybrid site, Vestas has effectively become the OEM of choice for the marquee onshore wind projects of the Portuguese energy transition. Combined with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ equity in MadoquaPower2X at Sines, the Danish footprint in Portuguese renewables is now visible across upstream capital, hardware OEM, and (via CIP) downstream offtake structuring.
For Iberdrola, Tâmega Norte is a flagship asset that the group will lean on heavily in its renewables disclosures during 2026 reporting cycles. For Vestas, it is a public-facing endorsement at a moment when European onshore wind has been buffeted by cost inflation and supply-chain pressure. And for Portugal, it is the most concrete physical answer yet to the question of whether the country can build the kind of large-format, high-capacity-factor wind infrastructure the EU’s decarbonisation targets require. Tâmega Sul, which is still in construction, will determine whether the project can deliver the second leg of its hybrid promise — and whether the V172 fleet can hit its own 200 GWh-per-year output expectation.