At the beginning of March, the Mining and Energy Planning Unit (Upme) presented the preliminary results of the grid connection requests for 2022 and 2023. Now, the entity published the details of the connections in which it is evident that the total assigned transport capacity was 8,321 megawatts.
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This is a higher figure than was originally reported, of 6,500 megawatts.
The projects that 190 of a total of the 843 presented were assigned, that is, 23% of the total. This means that the vast majority of these were left without assigned capacity.
According to the figures presented by the Unit, they were 69% of the total, which represents 579 of the transportation assignment requests.
The remaining percentage of projects corresponds to 10 applications canceled (1%), 44 withdrawn (5%) and 20 sued (2%).
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The 190 that received approval from Upme to connect to the network will be able to participate in the reliability charge auction launched by the Energy and Gas Regulation Commission (Creg). It should be remembered that for the reliability charge auction it is a requirement to have a connection concept for central dispatch projects, it is required that some projects of more than 20 megawatts achieve allocation to participate in the process published by the Creg.
The objective is that the assigned energy enters the system between December 1, 2027 and November 30, 2028.
This is why for those interested in participating, the results of the process carried out by this entity are so relevant, since it will partially define which projects have a free hand to compete for assignments. However, In the case of existing plants with works, this requirement will not apply.
When analyzing the energies that received a positive concept from Upme found that the main one that obtained the green light was solar, with 77% of the total (6,410 megawatts), followed by wind power with 15% (1,247 megawatts). Hydraulics appear to a lesser extent with 4% and gas thermal with another 4%, while coal and biomass are not very representative in the approved applications.
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When broken down by region, it is found that in La Guajira, 1,130 solar and 359 wind megawatts were approved. For its part, Antioquia, another of the departments that received a significant number of approvals, will add 1,019 solar megawatts and 250.5 wind power.
Alejandro Castañeda, president of Andeg, explained that in order to cover the deficit that is projected for 2027 and 2028 should be allocated between 1,500 and 1,800 megawatts to cover demand projections for these years and also leave a margin of 5%.
In this way, the projects that already have a connection to the network could participate in the competitive process launched by the Creg, to meet the needs of the market.
Daniela Morales Soler
Portfolio Journalist
