EDPR, the renewable energy arm of the Portuguese power utility EDP was awarded two 20-year contracts for two wind projects totalling 492 MW in Colombia's latest reliability charge auction (Subasta de Asignación de Obligaciones de Energía Firme) that aimed at ensuring a steady power supply over the 2022-2023 period. The projects correspond to the 212 MW Alpha and 280 MW Beta onshore wind parks, which are currently under development and slated to come online in 2022. EDPR will now now seek to secure long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with third parties to sell the electricity generated by the projects.
Designed to increase the power supply in case of droughts, the auction tendered a total combined capacity of 4,010 MW, spread between 1,240 MW of thermal, 1,372 MW of hydropower, 1,160 MW of wind and 238 MW of solar capacity. The contracts will require the selected hydropower projects to supply nearly 89 GWh/day in firm power over the aforementioned period; thermal power plants will have to supply around 73 GWh/day, wind plant 2.5 GWh/day and solar plants around 0.8 GWh/day. Enel's local subsidiary Enel Green Power Colombia (EGPC) secured three wind parks with a combined capacity of 491 MW and 170 MW of solar capacity.
This auction will eventually enable Colombia to include wind and solar projects in the domestic reliability matrix and comes following the disappointing results of the country's first long-term renewable energy auction (February 2019), which failed to award power generation and commercialisation contracts on grounds that only a few of the participating companies would have received contracts, thus infringing Colombia’s antitrust rules.
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