Enel Green Power’s growth in the renewable energy markets of new emerging nations like Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa and Morocco continues, creating a network of worksites, new plants and tenders that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean.
Work has started at the Talinay Poniente site for the construction of a new 61-megawatt wind farm. The new facility, which will have 32 turbines and will require investment of around $140 million, is scheduled to be put into service in the first half of 2015. The wind farm is being built in the Coquimbo region of Chile and will pair up with Talinay Oriente, which has been operational since last year.
The facility will add to Enel Green Power’s activities in the Latin American country, which include two hydropower plants with a total capacity of 92MW and the Talinay and Valle de los Vientos wind farms, which have 180MW of combined capacity. Besides the Talinay Poniente construction site, the 99MW Taltal wind farm, EGP’s largest in the country, is being built, while construction of three PV solar plants with a combined installed capacity of 136MW is also set to begin.
For Enel Green Power, Latin America means solar, wind, hydro and geothermal power. It also means in Brazil, Chile and now Uruguay, where in July EGP began building Melowind, its first wind farm in the country. Located in the Cerro Largo area, the plant will have an installed capacity of 50MW and a load factor exceeding 47 percent, equivalent to more than 4,100 hours of generation per year.
EGP is also growing in Africa. In May it put its first PV solar plant online and is now set on expanding its wind power operations. In South Africa EGP has grid-connected the 10MW Upington plant, and over the next few years it is planning to install an additional 300MW of PV solar capacity, as well as almost 200MW of wind power capacity. Moving north, EGP is also set to grow on the continent’s Mediterranean coast, joining a Moroccan consortium certified by the Office National de l'Electricité that is participating in the final stage of a tender for the construction of five wind farms totalling 850MW.