Enel Green Power continues to invest in Latin America’s renewable energy market, building a new 50 MW wind farm in Uruguay and a 100 MW wind energy facility in Mexico, while there are also encouraging signs for PV solar and geothermal energy.
With two new wind power facilities in Uruguay and Mexico that have a total of 150 megawatts of capacity and $270 million of investment, Enel Green Power is continuing to grow in Latin America.
‘The plant that we are building in Uruguay, which has a capacity of around 50MW and required around $100 million of investment, offers exceptional performance levels and a 47 percent capacity factor,’ said EGP’s Head for Latin America Maurizio Bezzeccheri in a recent interview with Enel Radio. ‘It will produce energy for more than 4,000 hours a year. By way of comparison, plant production in Italy ranges from 1,800 to 2,000 hours per year.’
The Melowind plant will be located in the Cerro Largo area of Uruguay, some 320 kilometres from the capital Montevideo. Bezzeccheri explained that this is only the first of many facilities that EGP will build in Uruguay, as ‘other plants will follow that will also be developed together with UTE, Uruguay’s state electricity utility’.
The Group’s growth is also continuing in Mexico with a new 100MW facility in the area of San Luis de Potosí, where EGP is also completing and preparing to put into service the 100MW Dominica 1 facility and beginning construction of the 100MW Dominica 2 wind farm.
‘Mexico is a rapidly growing nation, with positive population and industry dynamics,’ added Bezzeccheri. ‘Besides the Dominica 1 wind farm, we are completing the Sureste I – Phase II facilities in the Oaxaca area, where we already manage 140MW of wind power capacity.’
Latin America has areas with strong winds that generate wind power across Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil, and the continent also offers potential for PVsolar power investments. By the end of the year 150MW of PV solar power will be put into service in Chile, where, Bezzeccheri concluded, ‘this year we hope to begin the construction of our first geothermal plant in Latin America’.