Mexican industrial conglomerate Grupo Mexico Infraestrutura has brought in US developer Invenergy to build a 168MW wind farm in the state of Nuevo León to supply power to industries and corporate consumers.
Total investment in the project is estimated at $250m and it includes a 60km transmission line to link the project to Mexico’s power grid.
The wind farm, known as Fenicias, is expected to be ready by 2021. The company didn’t reveal the names of the off-takers.
Grupo Mexico said that including Fenicias, the group will reach 800MW of installed capacity in the country that has reached a total installed capacity of 5GW at the end of 2018.
Since the start of 2019, when the government cancelled a regulated market tender, renewable energy investors have been seeking non-regulated market contracts driven by the country’s energy law which obliges all power consumers to contract at least 35% of their power supply from clean energy sources by 2024.
Next to bilateral contracts such Grupo Mexico’s, large power trading companies are organising private tenders to contract renewable energy in the country.
Mexican wind power association AMDEE foresees the country's total wind power capacity to rise to 15GW by 2024.
Renewable energy groups recently launched legal action against the Mexican government over regulatory changes that local wind and solar bodies said “destroy” project values and undermine confidence, with an impact on $9bn of investments.
The generators – which include global giants Enel and EDF – are up in arms over proposed changes to rules for granting the tradable Clean Energy Certificates (CELs) that power users buy to help meet renewable share mandates.
