The Colombian government has announced a grid expansion plan which it says will facilitate up to 6GW of new clean energy capacity in the country’s Caribbean region.
Colombia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy announced the “Connected Caribbean: Urgent Works for a Reliable and Competitive Electricity Service” project late last week, with plans to invest up to US$1.7 billion in grid infrastructure. The scheme is designed to meet growing demand in regions like La Guajira, Cesar, Magdalena, Atlántico, Córdoba and Sucre, address historical issues around grid connection bottlenecks and reduce Colombia’s reliance on thermal power plants.
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The Ministry said the project will allow 6GW of new renewable energy generation capacity, “especially wind and solar,” to be added in the Caribbean region in the north of Colombia.
The Ministry provided a breakdown of the project, which includes: “15 synchronous compensators, 4 transformers of the National Transmission System (STN), 3 reactors and more than 13 works of the Regional Transmission System (STR)”
“These are not minor projects or half-measures,” said Edwin Palma, Minister of Mines and Energy, “We are correcting decades of neglect in the Caribbean’s electrical infrastructure, strengthening the grid, and creating the technical conditions for the energy transition to become a reality, without jeopardising the system’s reliability.”
He added that with these upgrades, the Ministry will “guarantee a more robust system, less expensive to operate and ready to integrate clean energy, while protecting users from outages, overloads, and poor service quality.”
Solar PV has become a major part of efforts to bolster energy security in Colombia. The government announced a dedicated solar development entity in December through the public utility Gecelca. It said Gecelca Solar will build a 650MW portfolio of solar PV projects across the country. The government has also commissioned significant solar PV capacity in public auctions; a 2024 auction closed with 4.4GW of solar PV capacity signed off.
A report from solar industry trade body SolarPower Europe released in August said that “Colombia and Peru are entering a new phase of energy diversification, where solar energy is being embraced to bolster energy security.”
However, grid and transmission infrastructure have been a major stumbling block for the technology’s expansion. A report from market analyst Wood Mackenzie last year said that the entire Latin America region will be hampered by transmission infrastructure, even as the solar sector continues to expand.
