The Brazilian unit of Portuguese utility EDPR signed a 19-year PPA for a 66MW PV plant in northeastern Brazil, its second corporate contract for solar in the country's fast-growing non-regulated market.
EDPR said it will sell the power to an unnamed off-taker from 2022 onwards when the Lagoa project is concluded in the frontier renewable energy state of Paraíba.
“With this new contract EDPR reinforces its presence in a market with a low risk profile, through the establishment of long-term contracts, attractive renewable resources and solid prospects in the medium and long-term,” the company said in a statement.
One of the biggest onshore wind power players in Brazil with around 900MW of the country’s total 15GW wind installed capacity, EDPR is now advancing in solar, one of the fastest growing power technologies there.
Last year utility -scale solar PV grew 29% to 2.47GW from 2018's level.
In September 2019, EDPR had signed a 16-year corporate PPA which will come from the 199MW Pereira Barreto PV plant, also set to start operations in 2022. In November, the company signed another 196MW corporate PPA with a 96MW wind plant.
EDPR has targeted 7GW of new renewable energy installed capacity by 2022, of which 25% will be solar. With this contract, the company says it has secured 1.3GW of solar capacity for 2022.
With higher prices than the competitive tenders, Brazil’s non-regulated market is growing fast as large companies are abandoning the regulated market to avoid yearly power-rate increases that can be as high a 15%.
