French utility Engie has powered a 100MW solar PV plant in the northwest state of Sonora, Mexico.
More than 390,000 solar panels have been installed in the PV plant, which represented an investment of over US$112 million.
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Electricity generated by the Solar Akin plant will be connected to Mexico’s National Electricity System (SEN in Spanish) and provide renewable energy to the region. This is not the first solar park Engie has built in the state of Sonora, with the 108MW Abril solar park located nearby and commissioned in 2022.
Installed solar capacity in Mexico reached 9.4GW at the end of 2022, according to energy think tank Ember. Despite high land availability and high potential for both solar PV and wind, renewables in the country have yet to take off, as policy changes since Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018 have hampered the growth of solar in Mexico in the past few years.
Although solar activity in Mexico is not booming as in the neighbouring US, earlier this month, London-based renewables investor Cubico Sustainable Investment acquired a portfolio of 1.6GW of solar and hybrid projects in the country.
A recent report from BloombergNEF about corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs)found that Engie signed the most renewables capacity in 2023 with 2.4GW, followed by energy company AES with 1.9GW and Indian integrated energy company Tata Power with 1.2GW.