The São Paulo financial daily Valor Econômico featured on its December 1 edition the news of a deal between Brazil’s Tecsis – a manufacturer of equipment for wind-generated energy – and the U.S. multinational General Electric. Titled “Tecsis fecha acordo bilionário com a GE” (Tecsis closes billionaire deal with GE), it was written by the reporter Maurício Capela. According to the article, the Brazilian company, whose headquarters are in the city of Sorocaba, in the interior of São Paulo, will supply General Electric with US$ 1 billion worth in blades for wind generators in the next four years. Contacted by the reporter, the Brazilian company didn’t deny the deal, but didn’t confirm it either. GE, on the other hand, confirmed it.
The article points out that wind-generated energy has been expanding consistently throughout the world. The growth is attributed to falling costs and to enhanced equipment capacity – today there’s available in the market equipment capable of generating up to 4 MW in energy from wind. That’s practically twice as much as the capacity of the most potent equipment available just a few years ago.
Quoted in the article, Ivo Puglialoni, technical director of Enercon, a Brazilian consulting firm that operates in the area, said that there are in the world 14,000 MW installed of wind energy generating equipment. Germany, with 32% of the total world capacity, ranks first in this type of energy. Next come Spain and Denmark. According to him, “today that market is worth some US$ 4.7 billion a year.”
The panorama in Brazil is more modest, but the potential is good. Currently Brazil produces 200 MW of wind-generated energy, basically in the States of Ceará and Rio Grande do Sul. Total revenues are estimated in some US$ 67 million. But there’s a consensus among experts that there’s room for a lot of improvement. At least eight States show good potential – in addition to Ceará and Rio Grande do Sul, which are not fully explored, there’s Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte. Puglialoni estimates Brazil’s potential for wind-generated energy in 6,000 MW, even though the survey on the Northeast – one of the country’s best areas for harnessing wind for energy production – is still being carried out.
One foreign company that believes in the future of wind-generated energy in Brazil is Spain’s Elecnor, which plans to start the operations of last module of the plant it’s building in the city of Osório, in Rio Grande do Sul, before the end of the year. According to the company’s director for external investments in Brazil, José Castellanos, the plant required investments of US$ 320 million to generate 150 MW. Today, with just two modules in operation, the plant produces 100 MW. “Of the total investment, Elecnor put US$ 273 million and the rest come from the equipment suppliers,” he said.
