Enel Green Power has completed construction of Primavera, its first wind farm in Brazil, which is only the first stage of a broad renewabe energy plan in the Latin American nation.
By 2022 Brazil will have an installed wind power capacity of 20.1 gigawatts, more than all the other countries in Latin American put together, according to Navigant Research, who confirm Brazil’s significant potential in wind power development.
The organization suggests that by 2016 Brazil could see 1.5GW of wind power growth per year, thanks to a number of different projects in the pipeline. These include those developed by Enel Green Power, which has won tenders for the achievement of a total of 401MW of wind power capacity, 30 of which were grid-connected on February 17.
In Morro di Chapeu in the State of Bahia, EGP has completed the construction of Primavera, its first wind farm in Brazil . The new plant consists of 13 2.3MW wind turbines, adding up to a total installed capacity of 30 MW, which can produce more than 145 million kilowatt hours per year.
In an interview with Enel Radio, Head of EGP for Latin America Maurizio Bezzeccheri, explained that the plant ‘was built in an internal area, which very particular characteristics from the point of view of its landscape, meaning that its construction required an almost obsessive attention, also in terms of environmental integration. This is a common trait of this type of infrastructure in Brazil’.
Primavera is the first to be completed of the three plants that will form Cristal, a group of wind farms that will have a total capacity of 90MW and an expected production of more than 400 million KWh per year.
‘Primavera is the first wind farm that we have built in this country,’ Bezzeccheri added. ‘And its construction has allowed us to acquire information that we are using for other wind farms that we are building.’
Besides Cristal, four other facilities are being built: the 56MW Curva, of which 28MW are already completed, the 56MW Modelo, the 120MW Serra Azul and the 80MW Fontes dos Ventos, whose start-up will begin in August 2014.
Other facilities in construction include 11MW of PV solar capacity in the State of Pernambuco and 102MW of hydropower ay Salto Apiacás, Cabeza de Boi and Fazenda, in the State of Mato Grosso.