Carlos Castellanos, CEO of ALTEN America: ALTEN America to triple its presence in Mexico over the next 4 years, to 1,000 MW installed capacity

  • By September of this year, ALTEN America will have completed construction and started operating the Solem project, a 350 MWp PV plant in the municipality of Aguascalientes (Mexico), with capacity to meet the electricity needs of more than de 400,000 Mexicans.
  • The plant, one of the biggest in Latin America, has signed contracts for the sale of power, energy and green energy certificates (known as CEL in Mexico) with CFE Suministro Básico as part of Mexico’s second Long-Term Electricity tender, conducted in September 2016.
  • The investment forecast for the plant comes to US$335 million. Solem’s sponsors are ALTEN America and Cubico Sustainable Investments. The Japanese company Sojitz Corporation is also a partner of ALTEN America on this project.
  • As well as the Solem project in Mexico, ALTEN Energías Renovables is building a 45.5MWp PV project in Namibia, scheduled to start operating in the last quarter of this year. It is completing financing on a 52 MWp PV project in Kenya and has an extensive new business pipeline, of more than 900MW, at different stages of development in these two regions (Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America) inside the so-called sun belt.

Madrid, 30 de abril, 2018.-ALTEN Energías Renovables, one of the most dynamic Independent Power Producers (IPP) on the international stage, specialists in the development, financing, construction and operation of photovoltaic solar plants, made a spectacular launch on the Latin American PV market, through its ALTEN America division, when it completed financing and started construction in August 2017 of a 350 MWp PV plant in Mexico.

The new PV plant, called Solem, in the estate of Aguascalientes, will be one of the biggest in Latin America. Construction is under the management of the Spanish construction group Ortiz, a shareholder of the ALTEN group. The plant is in the municipality of El Llano and covers over 1,035 hectares of land. 1,050,000 latest generation PV panels, each unit with 330 wp, fitted onto horizontal single-axis solar trackers, will be used in its construction. The average payroll during the construction works will be over 600 workers, with those numbers rising to 1,500 during hiring peaks.

The plant is scheduled to be finished and in operation by September 2018. The project has signed contracts for the sale of power, energy and green energy certificates (CEL) with CFE Suministro Básico, awarded during Mexico’s second Long-Term Electricity tender, conducted in September 2016. It will generate clean energy equivalent to the electricity needs of more than 400,000 people and avoid 362,000 tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere a year.

Total investment in this plant is budgeted at US$335 million. The project is being financed by ALTEN America itself, Sojitz Corporation and Cubico Sustainable Investments, plus co-financing from the Mexican development banks Bancomext and Banobras, the multilateral institutions Corporación Interamericana de Inversiones (IIC), member of the Inter-American Development Bank, the IFC, member of the World Bank Group and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

The financing operation for this plant, one of the biggest in Latin America, has received international recognition in the sector, being awarded Latin American Solar Deal of the Year by the prestigious journal IJ Global, during the XV edition of these awards, held in New York in March.

After implementing its first project in Mexico, ALTEN America intends to continue growing in the country, where it has 650 MW of projects in development phase. Over the next few months, ALTEN America plans to take part in Mexico’s fourth Long-term Electricity Tender, where around 2.000-3.000 MW is expected to be made available, around half of which could be adjudicated on PV projects. The ALTEN group has focussed on the Mexican market and estimates that the installation of new renewable energy plants will continue to grow in the coming years in order to meet the goal that Mexico has set itself for energy reform, namely that 35% of its total power generation will be sourced from clean energies by 2024.

“Our intention is to triple our presence in Mexico over the next four years. We want to develop and build new PV plants until we reach a target of 1,000 MW of installed capacity, for which we need to develop and construct new plants with a capacity of 650 MW and a forecast investment of around US$600 million”, declared Carlos Castellanos, CEO of ALTEN America.

The Executive Chair of ALTEN Energías Renovables, Juan Laso, highlighted the push that ALTEN Energías Renovables is making into the American continent, through its ALTEN America division: “We are putting our bets on Mexico. We have a great team with lots of experience and an attractive new project pipeline. We want to be a major player in the process so that Mexicans can enjoy cleaner, cheaper electricity.”
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About ALTEN Energías Renovables

The ALTEN Energías Renovables group is an Independent Power Producer (IPP) specialising in solar photovoltaic energy, with offices in the Netherlands, Spain, Mexico, Kenya, Nigeria, Mexico and Namibia, and great expertise in the development, financing, construction and operation of PV solar plants in challenging environments. In September 2018 the company will complete construction of a 350 MWp plant in Mexico, awarded in that country’s second electricity tender in 2016. In March this year, through its subsidiary in Africa, ALTEN Africa, it completed financing for a 45.5MWp PV plant in Namibia. It is close to completing financing for a 52 MWp PV plant in Kenya. It is involved in a development project for a 120 MWp PV plant in Nigeria through a PPA signed with NBET, Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trader. ALTEN has a further pipeline of over 900 MW at different stages of development in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.