Mexico's Mexico's Nuevo Leon state is planning to grow its wind power industry and hopes to launch an international tender in the next year with a view to installing as many as 250 wind turbines, sustainable development director Fernando Gutierrez Moreno revealed.

The state, home to Mexico's second-largest city Monterrey, hopes the expansion will help meet much of the state’s annual energy demand.  There are currently 5,000 MW of installed capacity Nuevo Leon, he added. He would not provide more specifics on how much energy the upcoming project will produce.

According to Gutierrez, the initiative will cost at least $2bn with the first turbines ready to generate electricity in 2014. With "strong winds" in the towns of Linares and Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon could potentially harness as much as 11.2 GW of wind power, he added.

Gutierrez said it's too early to provide a timeline for when the maiden project will be completed but the government hopes to get the process started in the next 12 months.

His comments followed the state's presentation of a wind-power map that hopes to make it competitive against other large Mexican wind-power states such as Oaxaca and Baja California.

Nuevo Leon also has great solar-power potential, Gutierrez added.