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Acciona

Acciona Commissions 246 MW Solar Power Project In Chile

written by saurabh

Acciona has claimed to have commissioned the largest solar power in South America.

Acciona Energia announced that it commissioned a 246 MW solar power project in the Atacama region of Chile. The El Romero solar power project was successfully linked to the Central Interconnected System following 13 months of construction.

The project is spread across 280 hectares and consists of 776,000 modules. The project required a total investment of $343 million. Around 500 GWh electricity generated from the project every year would be enough to power 250,000 homes in Chile and offset around 485,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission every year.

Acciona Energia Chile general manager José Ignacio Escobar said: “We completed the project in record time. We are committed to the objective of achieving a clean and sustainable energy mix in Chile, and the best way to demonstrate this is to complete the projects we undertake to the technical quality standards required and in the shortest possible timescale.”

Acciona secured rights to develop a 183 MW wind energy project in the recent renewable energy auction in Chile.

Image by vectoropenstock.com for Cleantechies

11/30/2016 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Construction Begins At 100 MW Kathu CSP Project In South Africa

written by saurabh

Construction has begun on yet another concentrated solar power project in South Africa under its famed, and now controversial, Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).

A consortium led by ENGIE recently announced that construction work has begun at the Kathu 100 MW CSP project in the Northern Cape province, South Africa. The project will be developed jointly by SENER and ACCIONA which shall provide engineering, procurement and construction services for the project.

The 100 MW project will sell electricity to Eksom through a 20-year power purchase agreement once it is fully commissioned in H2 2018. The Kathu Solar Park project will employ Sener patented parabolic trough reflectors and a molten salt storage system with 4.5 hours thermal storage capacity.

The project was allotted to ENGIE (formerly GDF Suez) and its partners during the third round of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Programme (REIPPP) auctions, with an investment of more than €500 million.

This project will be located near KaXu Solar One, which was the first solar thermal power project in South Africa. Both these companies have considerable experience in the development of solar thermal power projects. For both Sener and Acciona, this will be their second solar thermal project to be developed in South Africa. They worked together earlier on the Bokpoort plant (Upington), which is also a turnkey project employing Sener trough and a molten salt storage system. Bokpoort plant is expected to be commissioned by end of this year.

10/26/2016 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Wind Energy Scores Big In Chile’s Electricity Auction

written by saurabh

Update #2: The lowest solar price bid is now 2.42¢/kWh.

Update: It was Solarpack that set the record-low bid, not SunEdison, as originally indicated in this article. The article has been updated accordingly.

A couple of companies managed to secure a huge share in the latest electricity auction held in Chile, and auction where a new record-low solar bid was set (globally) and wind projects took 40% of the auctioned power contracts.

According to media reports, Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd. and Empresa Nacional de Electricidad/Chile SA won more than two-thirds of the electricity supply auction in Chile.

Meanwhile, Solarpack set a new record-low solar bid at 2.91¢/kWh ($29.1/MWh). That beats the 2.99¢/kWh bid a Masdar Consortium provided for an 800 MW solar power project in Dubai earlier this year.

Overall, entities participating in the Chile power auction bid to supply a total of 12.34 TWh of electricity every year.

In this auction project developers had to place bids for the price of electricity without disclosing the source. About half of the electricity supply, around 6.17 TWh, will be supplied from existing infrastructure, while the rest will require an investment of $3 billion, the energy minister of Chile stated.

Mainstream has won rights to supply 3.7 TWh of electricity every year (30% of the auctioned electricity), while Endesa, a subsidiary of Enel, will supply 4.9 TWh (40% of the auctioned electricity). There was a significant correction in tariff in this auction compared to previous one. The average tariff bid in the auction declined 40% to US$47.59 per MWh compared to the previous auction.

To supply the contracted electricity Mainstream will develop 7 wind energy projects with a total capacity of 985 MW. To achieve this capacity, the company is expected to invest $1.65 billion over the next 5 years. Electricity generated from these projects will be sold at tariffs between $38.8 per MWh and $47.2 per MWh.

Endesa will sell 4.9 TWh of electricity every year at an average tariff of $50.83 per MWh. Media reports do not mention the type of technology Endesa will use to supply the electricity, but solar and wind power are possibilities and it’s hard to see anything else competing with them at such a low price. Enel commissioned a 160 MW solar power project in the country earlier this year.

Another boost to renewable energy development may come from Spain’s Acciona, which will supply 506 GWh electricity every year.

Fresh investment commitments from renewable energy project developers, like Mainstream, come as no surprise as the government recently approved legislation that will create a new interconnected transmission network to be established alongside a new independent operator. This will ensure that power generated from renewable energy projects located in remote regions of the country is supplied to population centres.

“Nobody expected the energy price in the PV block to go below $30/MWh, but it is important to keep in mind that the tender cannot be evaluated just by its lowest price bid,” Christian Siemoneit, Managing Partner at Hansalia, told Cleantechies in response to the news. “In general we can see the high competitiveness of the Chilean energy market but also the low costs of capital of Enel / Endesa and Mainstream. The competition of utilities and IPPs with large-scale solar projects is very hard at the moment. But there are still opportunities in this sector, especially for wind parks and smaller solar projects. We see very attractive investment conditions and decent returns with renewable energy in Chile also over the next few years.”

Images by vectoropenstock.com and CleanTechnica

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08/18/2016 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Acciona Wins 168 MW Wind Energy Capacity In Mexico Auction

written by saurabh

Spanish company Acciona Energy secured a major win in the landmark renewable energy auction held recently in Mexico.

The company recently reported that it won a contract to supply 5.85.7 GWh electricity from wind energy projects through the first renewable energy auction held in Mexico. This amount equates to around 168 MW wind energy capacity.

Acciona shall develop the El Cortijo wind power project by setting up 56 units of its 3 MW wind energy turbine. Construction of the project is expected to being in 2017 and operations are scheduled to begin in 2018. The project shall supply electricity to the Federal Electricity Commission under a long-term contract with duration of 15 years.

Electricity generated from the wind energy project shall be sufficient enough to meet power demand of around 350,000 homes and also offset more than 563,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

The auction conducted by the Mexican government is part of its policy target to increase the share of renewable energy in electricity consumption to 35% by 2024. This target would require capacity addition of an estimated 12 GW of wind energy and 3 GW of solar power capacity.

Acciona Energy owns and operates 556.5 MW wind energy capacity in Mexico and has commissioned around 300 MW capacity for customers. The latest auction will help the company expand its footprint in Mexico.

04/17/2016 0 comment