Costa Rica has given the green light for the Montes de Oro wind farm, which will be developed by a group of Italian investors led by Valerio Catullo. The facility will have a nameplate capacity of 20 MW and will comprise eight wind turbines installed across an area of 105 hectares in Cañas, Guanacaste.
Elsewhere in Costa Rica, companies have received permits to move forward with three other wind farm projects: Eolico Guayabo, Los Leones and El Quixote. Eolico Guayabo is being developed by two companies – Venfor and Fila del Mogot D CR. The 50-turbine wind farm will be located in the hills of Mogote, which will also be home to the Los Leones project being developed by Coopeguanacaste. The idea is for this wind farm to have a capacity of 27 MW and is due to enter service in late 2013 or early 2014. Mogote is also home to the El Quixote wind farm, the brainchild of the Public Service Company of Heredia (ESPH).
The fifth project being rolled out in this Central American country is called Volcan Arenal (PEVASA) and would be sited in Tierras Morenas, Tilarán. This one is led by Rogelio Murillo Urbina, although ESPH might eventually participate.
350 MW auction
Not wanting to be left behind in the rapidly growing Latin American wind market, El Salvador has also announced plans to hold a bidding process to allocate permits for 350 MW of wind energy. DELSUR S.A. de C.V. representing the distribution companies of El Salvador (CAESS, S.A. DE C.V., DELSUR, S.A. DE C.V., AES CLESA y CIA., S. EN C. DE C.V., EEO, S.A. DE C.V., DEUSEM, S.A. DE C.V., B&D and EDESAL) has invited all individuals companies interested in participating in the bidding process known as DELSUR CLP 001-2010 to attend the first briefing to be held in the city of San Salvador, El Salvador on 20 May.
Chile, meanwhile, has been presented with a project proposal by the Irish company Mainstream Renewable Power to build a $500 million wind farm at a time when the country is also seeking to expand its energy sources to ease a tight supply.
Chile's environmental authorities must evaluate whether the plan is viable or not and then have 90 days to communicate the final decision. Mainstream expects to start building the wind farm in January 2013 in a place called Ckani, which is located about 45 kilometres northeast of the city of Calama in Northern Chile, according to the schedule submitted to the Environmental Assessment Service.
The wind farm would have an installed capacity of 240 MW, with 160 wind turbines adding energy into the Northern Interconnected System (SING), which provides electricity to Chile's strong mining sector.
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