Colombia lifts clean power share in Sept, demand rises 7.3% y/y

El Carmelo solar farm, Candelaria municipality, Colombia. Image by Celsia (www.celsia.com)

Colombia generated 86.70% of its electricity using clean and renewable sources in September, slightly up from 86.02% in August, as clean power production rose by 6.08% month-on-month, grid operator XM Compania de Expertos en Mercados has said.

Large hydropower plants (HPPs) and non-conventional renewables produced on average some 187.40 GWh per day from the first to the last day of September, while plants running on fossil fuels averaged 28.75 GWh of daily production, up 0.16% compared to August.

Details on Colombia’s renewables share are presented in the table below:

Technology:	Daily average production (in GWh/day)	month-on-month change:	Share in September:
Bagasse biomass	2.42	-2.14%	1.29%
Biogas	0.01	32.64%	0.01%
HPP with reservoir	161.38	7.24%	86.11%
Wind	0.13	-10.23%	0.07%
Run-of-river hydro	22.53	-0.85%	12.02%
Solar PV	0.94	12.39%	0.50%

Colombia’s demand for electricity grew by 7.28% year-on-year to 6,307.91 GWh in September. Comparing September 2021 with the same month in 2019, before the pandemic, XM said that power demand grew by 3.82%.

The demand in September increased across all sectors, led by manufacturing industries where the need for electricity grew by 44.68% on the year.

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