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The New Wind Power Generation Complex of Lagoa dos Ventos by Enel Will Produce About 1.6% of All Energy in Brazil with Expansion
Turn the lemon into lemonade! This is the “motto” of northeastern Brazil today, using the wind and sun that so harshly strike the Piauí hinterland and have now become one of the region’s greatest riches. This utilization has become possible thanks to wind energy, which powers the turbines installed in Lagoa dos Ventos: the largest wind farm in South America, built by Enel Green Power Brasil.
Enel Brasil, the leading Italian company in the sector, has already built 302 wind towers in Lagoa dos Ventos, located in the municipality of Dom Inocêncio (PI) and is now making the second expansion of the complex, with investments of about R$ 2.5 billion in the project and expected to start between the end of 2023 and early 2024.
“The first expansion of the Lagoa dos Ventos wind complex, started in 2020, is already partially operational and the expectation is that it will be 100% completed by the end of the year. Today, the wind generation complex produces about 1 GW and when the expansion is finished, the installed capacity will exceed 1.5 GW,” explains Nicola Cotugno, CEO of Enel Brasil.
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WIND ENERGY GENERATION
How Will the Wind Farm Expansion Be?
During the expansion, 70 wind turbines will be installed at the plant that will take the wind generation capacity of Lagoa dos Ventos to 6.7 TWh per year, which will represent about 1.6% of all energy produced in Brazil.
The wind generation complex of Enel uses wind turbines from GE Renewable Energy, and with the new towers will also use machines from Nordex, with wind blades from Aeris (AERI3).
Today, the Enel Group has a total installed renewable energy capacity in Brazil of over 4.9 GW, of which more than 2.4 GW are from wind sources, around 1.2 GW are from solar sources, and about 1.3 GW are from hydro.
Great Potential of Brazil
According to Cotugno, “Brazil has a great potential for building a renewable energy matrix, with the main basis being wind and solar, thanks to its immense territory, regular winds, and abundant sun.”
“Brazil has immense potential. It could achieve 100% renewable energy generation, without risks of rationing and without having to use fossil fuels. And all this with land investments, with much lower costs than offshore wind plants,” explains the executive, “Not to mention the speed of construction,” he concludes.
In about 15 months, we set up a wind power complex with a production capacity of 400 MW, considering that a thermal power plant or an offshore wind plant takes a long time, not to mention a nuclear power plant, which takes 15 years. Therefore, for Enel, the future is less than two years.
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