Anatolio Santos, Atlántico Department’s Secretary of Economic Development, brought up the initiative at a government meeting.
The aim of the proposed initiative is to boost the region’s milk sector, to make it more competitive through lower costs. Currently, farmers pay up to COP 1,500,000 ($500) per tank, per month in electricity bills for milk cooling facilities.
Santos is now seeking support for the scheme from Colombia’s Ministry of Agriculture. Local dairy producers have reacted positively to the suggestions: “This idea was born because of the high costs we are paying in electricity,” said Robinson Yance, of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Atlántico. “It is very important to target alternative energy that is environmentally friendly.”
Colombia has recently begun to turn toward solar and wind in order to diversify its energy mix. Currently the country relies on big hydro for around 70% of its electricity. Earlier in 2017, new legislation was published by the Ministry of Mines and Energy to regulate self-consumption for PV systems up to 100 kW.
Colombia’s first utility scale PV power plant, a 10 MW installation located in the Valle del Cauca region, is currently under construction and expected to come online in the third quarter of 2017.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.