Brazilian mining company Vale’s Sol do Cerrado solar energy complex has reached a full installed capacity of 766MW.
The company announced that it had received authorisation from the Brazilian National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL) for the commercial operation of the last PV plant of the project, of a total of 17. The solar complex will supply 16% of all the energy consumed by Vale in Brazil when operating at full capacity.
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The project boasts 1.4 million solar panels with an automatic tracking system. It is also connected to Brazil’s national interconnected transmission system.
“Over the past few months, we have been working hard on the ramp-up of the project, which went exactly as planned. Sol do Cerrado is a complex that brings together local development and renewable energy, contributing to our goal of being leaders in sustainable mining,” said Ludmila Nascimento, Vale’s energy and decarbonisation director.
Vale began operations at Sol do Cerrado in November last year, which deployed JinkoSolar’s Tiger Neo bifacial modules. Moreover, the company chose Nextracker to supply its NX Horizon solar trackers for the solar project. Nextracker also supports the project with engineering, commissioning and asset management services as well as data analytics for preventive maintenance.
Previously, PV Tech Premium reported that Brazil started to include solar in the country’s power auctions in 2017, while Brazil would mainly rely on small-scale solar to be the main driver of solar PV development. For example, 4.6GW of small-scale solar and just 1.6GW of utility-scale solar were added in Brazil in 2021.