Wind power in Brazil reaches 15.1 GW

Wind energy has burst in Brazil in recent years and has climbed to eighth place in the world ranking, with installed wind farm capacity that has multiplied fifteen times in the last decade.

Brazil from having 1 GW of installed capacity with wind turbines, in 2010, to 15.1 GW this year, distributed in 600 wind farms in 12 states of Brazil, according to the latest data from the Brazilian Wind Energy Association (ABEEólica).

Wind energy has gained ground and currently represents 9.2% of the national electricity matrix, behind only hydroelectric power plants, with 60.3%.
Despite its solid progress, this source of renewable energy still has a wide window of growth in the country, according to specialists, and it is expected that in 2023 there will be close to 19.4 GW of installed wind capacity, taking into account the auctions already made and contracts signed in the free market.

“We have a very big growth perspective, we see that wind and solar are the sources that will grow the most in Brazil in the next thirty years,” the president of ABEEólica, Elbia Silva Gannoum, told Efe.

Despite the achievements in recent years, thanks to the improvement of technology, competitiveness and good prospects for the future, Silva stressed that the weakened situation of the Brazilian economy has slowed the total takeoff of the sector by reducing the contracting of energy in regulated auctions.

Brazil entered into a deep recession between 2015 and 2016, when its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lost around seven percentage points, and between 2017 and 2018 the economy only grew by 2%.

The forecasts for this year continue weak and, according to the projections of the financial market, the GIP of the South American giant will rise a shy 0.8% in 2019.

“The economy is making it difficult, when there is economic growth, we are going to see a bigger growth in the sector, but we still have a market in the middle that is growing a lot and with a very good future outlook”, added the president of ABEEólica.
The northeast region concentrates most of the wind farms in Brazil, a country with favorable climatic conditions, irrigated by a regular and intense wind, and where wind turbines have proliferated.

In the municipality of Rio do Fogo, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, is the first installation of the Spanish multinational Iberdrola in the development of renewable energies in that country, inaugurated in 2006, and which represents the starting point of an enterprise that has expanded strongly in the last decade.

Iberdrola, present in the South American country through its subsidiary Neoenergia, has 17 wind farms in operation, distributed in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba and Bahia (northeast), with an installed capacity of 516 megawatts (MW), and has another 15 under construction.

With the completion of the implementation of all the wind farm projects, Iberdrola’s portfolio of assets in operation in wind energy will total around 1 GW in 2022.

The growth of Iberdrola’s wind projects in Brazil has accompanied that of the sector itself in the country, where there is already a national production chain, with six turbine manufacturers in Brazilian soil.

“These sources suffered technological changes that increase their productivity and can compete with the cheapest source, hydroelectric power, whose resources are running out,” said Silva.