Colombia

State-owned China Xinhua Power Development has booked a $53 million discount on seven solar farms as developer Kongsun seeks to pay down debts, and Canadian Solar has landed a 45 MWh energy storage contract in Colombia.

Projects not exceeding 5 MW in size will be entitled to participate in the procurement exercise. Selected developers will be granted a 15-year PPA and will have to start commercial operation on January 1, 2023.

Project selected in the auctions will be granted a 15-year PPA and will have to begin delivering power in December 2022.

An group of international scientists has developed a mathematical model to design hybrid renewable energy systems relying on pumped hydro storage for islands. According to their analysis, which was applied to the Ometepe island in Nicaragua, a similar system could provide a cost of energy ranging from €0.047/kWh to €0.095/kWh.

The obligation will be applied annually from 2022. Colombian power utilities will have to procure the clean energy concerned under long-term contracts lasting at least a decade.

Ecopetrol has announced plans to develop six new solar projects, which will bring its total installed PV capacity to 155 MW by the end of this year.

The private-sector arm of the World Bank, which claims to leverage $3 of its own capital and $8 from third parties for every dollar invested in its blended finance funds, has attempted to quantify what devoting Covid recovery funds to green investment would mean for emerging economies.

Scientists in Spain and Colombia took a closer look at the degradation mechanisms affecting perovskite solar cells, and developed a new, high throughput method to characterize their performance in an outdoor setting. The group evaluated the method through outdoor testing on perovskite modules manufactured in a lab. it expects its findings to offer easier device characterization and better understanding of the degradation mechanisms affecting perovskite solar cells, both important factors in the technology’s development.

Spanish developer Grenergy has secured a PPA from Colombian energy company Celsia for the supply of 120 GWh per year. The electricity will be provided by a solar park that will begin commercial operations in 2022.

In addition to the auction, scheduled for the first quarter of 2021, the Latin American country is also defining a green hydrogen roadmap in collaboration with Chile.