Central & South America

The planned fourth round of the RenovAr program will probably not be held this year or next. The Argentinian government says grid constraints and difficult financing conditions may increase the auction’s prices.

Odyssey connects stakeholders along the mini-grid value chain to streamline development and financing processes. Reportedly over 275,000 connections would be achieved if the full pipeline is realized, and recently, it experienced a significant boost in a very dynamic mini-grid market.

The $45 million loan was granted by French financial services provider, Natixis. The solar facility, selected by the Mexican governmemt in the first energy auction of 2016, will be located in the state of Aguascalientes.

According to a new report published by consultancy Greener, the price of DG systems keeps falling in Brazil and total installed capacity has surpassed 308 MW. In the first half of the year, newly installed capacity was around 126 MW – more than the country installed in all of last year.

The Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy announced that up to 1 GW of renewable energy generation capacity may be allocated. The competition will be open to solar, wind and biomass projects exceeding 10 MW in size.

The blockchain technology, which was developed by Austrian company, Riddle&Code, is intended to help the Portuguese power provider measure the electricity consumption of each user who owns and operates a solar array installed under net metering.

With a capacity of 58 MW, the Caribbean’s largest PV plant has been commissioned in the Dominican Republic. The site was developed, planned and built by German EPC, F&S Solar. It now aims to ramp the project up to 119 MW by next year.

Colombia’s Celsia is issuing green bonds worth US$145 million to finance its large solar PV project pipeline, while U.K.-based Faro Energy is resorting to clean energy bonds to fund its distributed generation (DG) solar projects across Brazil.

The Brazilian oil giant has signed a memorandum of understanding with its French strategic ally, Total and its subsidiary, Total Eren to invest in solar and on-shore wind projects in Brazil.

Without the threat of a hostile attitude from the state-owned power provider, the Mexican distributed generation (DG) market may now continue to be a strong driver of growth in the northern American country.