With clashes over endangered wildlife and the complexity of the country’s permitting processes temporarily bringing the breakneck pace of desert solar development in the southwestern U.S. down a few notches, a few developers have already begun looking south for solar real estate. Not south, as in Texas, but south, as in Mexico. The northwestern Mexican state of Baja California could very well be exporting solar and wind power to the Californian metropolis of San Diego in the near future, according to DailyFinance.
As of right now, all this is still talk, of course. A small, 10-megawatt wind farm is in the process of being built in the windy hills of Baja California, and Concentrated Solar Power developers have long eyed Mexico for its solar radiation. In spite of the country’s high electricity prices (roughly $0.10/kWh more than in the States), however, CSP has yet to grab a foothold in Mexico, where domestic reserves of oil and gas continue to dominate energy usage and the national energy sector continues to be a state-controlled monopoly. Lack of credit and financial incentives for clean energy further prevent it from gaining traction.
Still, the Mexican solar sector, however small, exists, primarily in the form of off-grid photovoltaics. Roughly 60,000 to 80,000 solar PV systems operate across rural Mexico, after the government identified the technology as one of the most cost-effective ways to provide power to rural Mexicans without access to electricity. And on top of that, almost a year ago Wal-Mart Mexico launched what was the largest solar array in Latin America at the time, a 174-kW array of solar panels on top of its roof.
Nevertheless, the news is just a whiff of a possibility—it’s difficult to foresee what direction it may take. Solar development in Arizona and California may return to business as usual, environmentalists and utility-scale developers may reach a compromise, NIMBYism may die down. It’s only the beginning of the year.
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