Central & South America

Linde says its White Martins unit will build a second electrolyzer to produce green hydrogen in Brazil, while Sunfire has launched a front-end engineering and design study (FEED) for a new 500 MW hydrogen project.

Car manufacturer Stellantis has agreed to invest $100 million in a 49.5% stake in Argentina’s 360 Energy Solar. The two parties plan to develop new solar plants, install large-scale storage systems, and produce hydrogen energy.

Brazil’s cumulative installed PV capacity exceeded 41 GW at the end of March, with utility-scale plants accounting for 13 GW and distributed-generation resources representing 28 GW of the total.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says developers installed 345.5 GW of solar throughout the world in 2023. China mainly drove the surge, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all new renewable energy, but IRENA says more equitable growth will be needed to hit 2030 deployment targets.

A heat wave drove Brazil’s power demand up to a record high of 102 GW last week. However, it also affected solar power generation and pushed PV module operating temperatures to up to 60 C.

Solarpack has closed financing for a 300 MW solar project in Peru, marking the country’s first solar farm to sell power through a bilateral power purchase agreement (PPA).

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that Chile, Uruguay and Argentina saw irradiance up 5% to 15% above normal in January and February. Responsible for the surplus sunlight across South America was the ongoing Amazon drought, and circulation changes that pushed weather fronts further south of the continent than usual.

The Atacama Desert in Argentina and Chile is the sunniest region on earth. Despite the excellent solar radiation resource availability and plenty of room on rooftops and on the ground, solar PV is not as widespread in either country as would have been expected based on the initial deployment of large-scale PV power plants in both countries some ten years ago.

Engie has deployed a 139 MW/638 MWh battery in northern Chile. The storage project is connected to the 181.2 MW Coya solar plant in the Antofagasta region.

Cuban Minister of Energy Vicente de la O Levy says 2 GW of planned solar capacity will come from 92 ground-mounted PV plants spread across the island.