The Enel Group’s Brazilian renewable energy subsidiary Enel Green Power Brasil Participações Ltda (EGPB) has started commercial operations of the 716MW Lagoa dos Ventos wind farm, which is the largest wind facility currently in operation in South America and Enel Green Power’s largest wind farm worldwide.
The construction of the 716MW facility, located in the municipalities of Lagoa do Barro do Piauí, Queimada Nova and Dom Inocêncio, in Brazil’s north eastern state of Piauí, involved an investment of around 3bn Brazilian reais, equivalent to around 620m euros at the current exchange rate.
The 716MW Lagoa dos Ventos, which is now fully up and running, is comprised of 230 wind turbines and will be able to generate over 3.3TWh per year while avoiding emissions of over 1.9m tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Out of the wind farm’s total installed capacity, 510MW were awarded to Enel Green Power in Brazil’s A-6 public tender in December 2017 and is supported by 20-year power supply contracts with a pool of distribution companies operating in the country’s regulated market, while the output from the remaining 206MW will be delivered to the free market for sale to retail customers, leveraging Enel’s integrated presence in the country.
In December 2020, Enel announced the start of construction of the new 396MW Lagoa dos Ventos III wind project. With the new wind farm, which will require an investment of around 360m euros, the total capacity of Lagoa dos Ventos will reach around 1.1GW. The entire wind complex will have 302 wind turbines and will be able to generate around 5.0TWh annually, avoiding the emission of over 2.8m tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
In Brazil, the Enel Group, through its subsidiaries EGPB and Enel Brasil, has a total renewable installed capacity of over 3.7GW, of which 1,498MW are wind, 979MW solar and 1,269MW hydroelectric.
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