Renewables accounted for 13.9% of national energy demand

In 2022, 13.9% of the total national electricity demand was supplied from renewable sources, the same contribution that the sector had already made in 2021.

Santa Cruz is one of the territories with active wind farms: Bicentenario, Cañadón León, Viento Los Hércules, together with Chubut and Tierra del Fuego are the major producers in Patagonia.

The national government informed that this figure shows the "continuous progress of the sector within the national energy matrix as a whole, which contributes to diversify through the incorporation of new renewable generation sources that add capacity to the grid".

As regards generation, wind technology had the highest participation with 73%, followed by solar (15%), bioenergies (6%) and small hydroelectric uses (5%), according to data from the Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico Sociedad Anónima (CAMMESA).

The official statistics specified that "on October 8, 2022, the instantaneous record of demand supply from renewable energies was reached, contributing 31.33% of the national electric demand, surpassing the previous record achieved that same year, 30.44%".

Furthermore, in the same month of October, 17.8% of the electricity demand was supplied by renewable sources, with 1,822.4 GWh of energy generated, which also marked a new historical record. In addition, the levels of demand supply from renewables reached 14.7% in November and 13.4% in December.

On the other hand, Renewable Energy Distributed Generation registered a 50% increase in the number of registered User-Generators (UG) (1,072 in 2022 compared to 714 in 2021) and 100% growth in installed capacity (18,192 kW in 2022 vs. 9,106 kW in 2021). The increase was due to the incorporation of more than 9,000 kW, which is equivalent to 50% of the total power in the Regime established by Law 27,424.

With a great potential due to the quality of the winds, Patagonia is one of the most benefited Argentine regions for the development of this technology. While there are different initiatives to create new parks, Santa Cruz has three of them in activity:

"Bicentenario" (located 15 kilometers from Jaramillo) has 28 wind turbines, capable of producing 3.6 MW each, corresponding to the power awarded (100, 8 MW) through the National Renovar Program and 7 wind turbines from the national MATER program of 3.6 MW each (21.6 MW).

"Cañadón León" (Cañadón Seco) is owned by YPF Luz, and has an installed capacity of 99 MW from CAMMESA and 23 MW MATER; in total, a little more than 120 MW. It has 29 wind turbines and with this capacity it can supply energy to 130 thousand homes. It started operating in August 2021.

"Viento Los Hércules" (Koluel Kaike), was put into operation in March 2021 by the renewable energy company Total Eren. It has an installed capacity of 97.2 MW. It is estimated that the project will cover the energy consumption of 110 thousand homes.

In this scenario, Santa Cruz is one of the Argentinean wind energy producing districts and demanded to the National Electricity Regulatory Entity -months ago- the expansion of the electric energy transport capacity to deepen the development of this activity.