Celsia may consider selling stalled wind projects in Colombia

Colombian power utility Celsia is willing to consider the sale of two wind farm projects in Colombia’s La Guajira department in light of the delays and difficulties it is experiencing with their development.

The sale of the Acacia and Camelias projects, totalling around 330 MW, is one of the options, Celsia said last week in response to some media reports that stated the company was scrapping the work altogether.

Celsia was awarded power purchase agreements (PPAs) in Colombia’s 2019 renewable energy auction to deliver 767 GWh of electricity per year from the Acacia and Camelias wind farms. The deliveries under the 15-year PPAs should have started in January 2022.

But the projects were held up due to the difficulties with community consultations, delays in obtaining environmental licences, and delayed installation of the transmission lines, among others, Celsia said.

One of the options for tackling the delay in La Guajira is to move the equipment to the newly-acquired wind project in Peru, Celsia said. The company emphasised that it will continue to work on obtaining the necessary licences for the two projects, but is also open to other possibilities for their development.

Celsia’s challenges in La Guajira bring to mind Enel Colombia’s troubles with raising its Windpeshi wind farm due to community blockades in the same department and EDF Renewables’ struggles with environmental permitting for its Pubenza solar project in the Cundinamarca department.

Both Enel Colombia and EDF Renewables solved their problems by quitting the project.

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