The Week in Energy: New developments Toward Distributed Generation

New agreements between Spain and Latin America, CRE approved a new regulation for collective distributed generation, investments in renewable energy were confirmed, and projects where blockchain meets renewables were announced.

Mexico

Mexico and Renewable Energy Associations will sign a climate change agreement at COP25. 

Twelve associations from Spain and Latin America will sign an agreement to promote green energy at the United Nations Conference for Climate Change (COP25) in Madrid. This agreement will establish collaborative relationships in order to promote legislation that can make possible to harness the renewable energy resources in every country.  In addition, it will pursue the exchange of experiences and analysis that can help to push renewable competitiveness.

Mexico approves new regulation for collective distributed generation.

The Agreement by which the Energy Regulation Commission (CRE) issues the model contract with the Basic Services supplier and its methodology applicable to collective distributed generation was approved at its last November session.  

With this regulation, new alternatives arise in the category of distributed generation. It will allow distributed generation systems to be connected to more than one load center within the same node, to have the collective contract model and also to request for registration or cancellation.

Grupo Mexico will invest US$250 million in renewable energy.

 As part of its green energy investment strategy, Grupo México Infrastructure announced an investment of US$250 million to build Fenicias wind farm in Nuevo León.  This project will be developed by Invenergy and will have a capacity of 168MW. It is expected to produce more than 680 000 MW per/ year and to start its activities in 2021.

With the development of Fenicias project Grupo México will increase its power generation capacity to almost 800 MW, becoming one of the main power generators in Mexico.

International

BP will supply renewable energy to the European data centers that drive the Amazon Web Services (AWS)

BP will start the delivery of energy from wind and solar developments located in Sweden and Spain to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform.  Initially, BP will supply 122MW of renewable power capacity to AWS from its windfarm which is being built in Västernorrland, Sweden. The agreement with AWS also plans to supply 50MW from a new photovoltaic park in Spain.  Operations at the wind farm are expected to start in 2022 and in the photovoltaic park in 2021.

Spanish department store El Corte Ingles will use blockchain for renewable energy

Spain`s El Corte Ingles is working in a project with EDP Group to use a blockchain solution for tracking renewable energy consumption. This project is being developed by EDP Renováveis (the Spanish subsidiary of Portugal’s EDP Group and the fourth-largest generator of wind energy in the world) and it will help to validate the origin of electricity from EDP`s windfarms in Spain, delivering energy to El Corte Ingles shops in Malaga, Sevilla and Madrid.

EDPR’s blockchain solution will work in tandem with the traditional Guarantees of Origin issued by National Commission of Markets and Competition, to certify the renewable source of each megawatt-hour consumed by El Corte Inglés.

Technology group Wärtsilä will provide an energy storage solution for Fekola gold mine in Mali.

The Fekola Mine is located in southwest Mali. The energy storage project is expected to improve the mine’s operations, reduce fuel consumption, and reduce its carbon emissions.  The mine currently relies on conventional fuels for its power and will benefit from Wärtsilä’s energy storage with a hybrid energy system. The cost savings and improved power reliability it offers, are essential considerations implied in this solution. 

Fekola is the first mine in the region to add energy storage and solar technology to their operations.  Wärtsilä’s technology will not only control the new energy storage system, it will also control a new 30MW photovoltaic park currently under construction.