Mexico to Triple Demand for Solar This Year with 250 Megawatts Stephan Nielsen - Businessweek
go to original January 6, 2014

Mexico, poised to allow foreign oil extraction for the first time in 75 years, is finding its abundant natural resources also appeal to investors in a much cleaner energy: sunshine. (Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg)

Demand for solar panels in Mexico will more than triple this year to 250 megawatts and the country will become Latin America’s biggest market by 2016, according to GTM Research.

More than 200 megawatts of the projects will be large-scale facilities and about half of them are planned for the state of Baja California Sur, Adam James, a South Bend, Indiana-based analyst at GTM Research said in a telephone interview.

Mexico is expected to match Chile as the region’s biggest market in 2015 and then surpass it as more local businesses build solar farms to offset their energy costs, James said. Demand for solar power in Mexico now is driven mostly by a government program that guarantees state-power utility Comision Federal de Electricidad will buy power from solar farms with as much as 30 megawatts of capacity.

Mexico’s solar market will “rise significantly in 2016 and continue to post growth in the 300- to 400-megawatt range out to 2018,” he said. The country installed about 70 megawatts last year.

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