Wind power gains momentum in Mexico

Wind power in Mexico is picking up speed amid a slew of investment in new projects and government plans to expand the sector over the coming years in a bid to meet its renewable energy generation targets.

The country's wind power association (Amdee) announced this month that Mexico plans to quadruple its wind power capacity by 2025, with an investment of US$46bn.

Mexico's total installed wind capacity is currently 3,283MW, distributed across 31 wind farms in the states of Chiapas, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas.

Oaxaca is the largest wind producing state, with a total of 21 farms, while a total of US$5bn has been invested in wind farms across the country since 2004.

The country's energy transition law, approved last December as part of the energy reform, dictates that, by 2018, 25% of Mexico's power must be generated from renewable sources, followed by 30% by the year 2021, 35% by 2024, 45% by 2036, and 60% by 2050.

According to Amdee, Mexico wants wind power to account for 40% of its renewable energy matrix.

Enel Green Power this week broke ground on the US$250mn, 129MW Palo Alto wind farm in the state of Jalisco, which will bring the Italian firm's portfolio in Mexico to 600MW.

"This new wind farm is an important step towards the consolidation of EGP's presence in Mexico, a market that has huge potential for development," the Rome-based firm's CEO, Francesco Venturini, said at the time.

In March, EGP completed the 102MW Sureste I-Phase II wind farm in Oaxaca state.

Earlier in October, Spanish firm Acciona and Mexican state utility CFE signed an MOU to jointly develop renewable energy projects in Mexico. Acciona Energía operates four wind farms totaling 557MW in Oaxaca state. Acciona is also building the Ventika and Ventika II wind farms totaling 252MW in Nuevo León state, and the 49.5MW Ingenio wind farm in Oaxaca.

And also this month, Mexican firm Grupo Dragón said it would invest US$200mn in developing a second phase of its 50MW Los Altos I wind farm in Jalisco state.

Mexico also began exporting wind power to the US for the first time this year.

The US$300mn Energía Sierra Juárez wind farm in Tecate, Baja California, entered operations in June, developed by IEnova and InterGen. The 155MW plant sell electricity to utility San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) under a 20-year power purchase agreement.

A US NGO working with residents of Oaxaca state, Yansa Foundation, has said that construction of a so-called community wind farm there is feasible. Such a farm would better benefit the local communities, Yansa said.

The organization bemoaned the fact that privately owned farms encroach on local people's lands but do not directly benefit them, despite consultations among indigenous peoples being carried out prior to some projects being built, such as the one held among the Zapotec communities of Juchitán in Oaxaca earlier this year.