Enel Green Power, the renewable power arm of Italy’s Enel in Brazil, has started commercial operations of the Fontes dos Ventos II wind farm, in Pernambuco. The R$430-million project has an installed capacity of 99 megawatts, with 18 wind turbines.
The power will be sold in the free market, in which large consumers can choose their own suppliers, through the trading company Enel Trading. One client is retailer Lojas Renner.
Fontes dos Ventos II will supply the demand of 170 stores and a distribution center of Renner for 15 years, in a contract with an expected total maximum volume of 11.3 average megawatts. According to Enel Green Power, the contract will allow Renner to reduce the final cost of power by 40% and avoid around 6,200 tonnes of carbon per year in emissions.
Fontes dos Ventos II is installed in the same region where Enel has been operating since 2015 the country’s first hybrid solar and wind farm, which combines the Fontes dos Ventos I wind farm and the Fontes Solar project, with a total installed capacity of 89.9 MW.
“We are expanding our wind installed capacity in a region where we have had a presence for years. Long before the recent resolution of the regulatory agency for the development of hybrid plants in the country, we installed in that region of Pernambuco a pioneering project, with a wind and a solar farm built side by side. It was a project that generated important lessons learned for the company and for other agents in the sector,” said Roberta Bonomi, head of Enel Green Power in Brazil.
Today, in Brazil, Enel Green Power has a total installed renewable capacity of more than 4.7 gigawatts, of which more than 2.1 GW are from wind power, 1.2 GW from solar sources and 1.3 GW from hydroelectric plants.
Source: Valor International