Copyright by Gilberto Adolfo Calderon 2009 The Thesis Committee for Gilberto Adolfo Calderon Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Wind Energy Projects in Mexico APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Christopher Jablonowski Surya Santoso Cesar Acosta-Mejia Wind Energy Projects in Mexico by Gilberto Adolfo Calderon, B.S. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin December 2009 Dedication To my family and friends who have always shown me their support. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Christopher Jablonowski for his guidance in this research. I also like to thank Dr. Surya Santoso for sharing his knowledge in wind energy, and to Dr. Cesar Acosta-Mejia who supervised the statistical analysis in this work. I express my gratitude to all the members of the UT-ITAM Partnership for Mexico Energy Sector Development for all that I learned from them. Special thanks to my sponsor The Training, Internships, Exchanges, and Scholarships (TIES) Initiative funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development through Higher Education for Development (HED). Special thanks to Dr. Michelle Foss for taking such a keen interest in my academic and professional development. Last but not least, I thank all my friends who made my time in Austin a wonderful experience. December 4th, 2009 v Abstract Wind Energy Projects in Mexico Gilberto Adolfo Calderon, M. A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: Christopher J. Jablonowski The interest in renewable energy has grown in recent decades because of environmental effects of fossil fuels and technological advances that have made some renewable energy technologies competitive with conventional gas fired power plants. Wind energy is playing a major role in increasing renewable energy’s share of electricity production worldwide. The global installed capacity of wind power has grown at a rate of more than 20% each year since the year 2000 (WWEA, 2009). Currently, the Mexican electricity sector is comprised of fossil fuel fired power plants. However, Mexico has a large endowment of renewable energy resources that can be harnessed to generate electricity. For example, the Comisión Reguladora de Energía estimates that Oaxaca´s wind power potential is about 10,000 MW (CRE, 2006). Studies have shown that Baja California´s wind power potential is also about 10,000 MW (Walker, 2007 cited in KEMA and Bates and White, 2008). This thesis focuses on wind energy because it is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the next decade in Mexico relative to other renewable energy sources (Sener, 2008). Mexico’s installed wind power capacity is 202.5 MW. This capacity will increase vi by 456 MW by the end of 2010. Another 2,123 MW will be added during the period 2010-2012 (AMDEE, 2006). This research investigates various aspects of the wind farm development process in Mexico. The initial chapters describe the electricity sector and its participants. Subsequent chapters describe the regulatory framework and the mechanisms used by private investors to finance renewable energy projects. The final chapters describe the economic aspects of wind energy projects using a conventional discounted cash flow model. Statistical simulation is used to estimate capacity factors, and design of experiments is used to statistically analyze performance under different scenarios. vii Wind Energy Projects in Mexico 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 2 Mexican electricity sector: structure and regulation ........................................... 2 2.1 Government entities related with the Mexican electric sector. ................. 4 2.2 External Energy Producers............................................................................. 5 3 Independent Power Producers (IPP) .................................................................... 9 4 Renewable energy ................................................................................................. 13 5 Wind energy ............................................................................................................ 14 5.1 The CFE´s wind energy projects ................................................................. 18 5.2 Wind energy in the world .............................................................................. 19 6 Incentives for renewable energy projects........................................................... 21 6.1 Green Fund ..................................................................................................... 23 6.2 The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and carbon certificates ... 24 7 Wind turbines .......................................................................................................... 26 7.1 Wind turbines subsystems............................................................................ 27 7.2 Power performance curve............................................................................. 30 8 Wind farm development process ......................................................................... 32 9 Funding sources available for energy projects.................................................. 35 10 Case study: EURUS wind farm........................................................................ 37 11 Case study: La Venta II wind farm .................................................................. 39 11.1 La Venta demography ................................................................................... 39 12 Project economics: wind farm output estimation........................................... 41 12.1 Methodology ................................................................................................... 41 12.2 Main assumptions .......................................................................................... 43 12.3 Simulated scenarios ...................................................................................... 43 12.4 Base scenario analysis ................................................................................. 44 12.5 Impact of a delay in the project’s start of operation .................................. 47 12.6 Analysis of results factorial experiment ...................................................... 47 13 Conclusions and key findings........................................................................... 50 14 Appendix A Plants operated by External Energy Producers. ..................... 52 15 Appendix B- Eurus wind farm emissions reduction. ..................................... 53 16 Appendix C- Cash flow spreadsheet............................................................... 54 17 Appendix D- Oaxaca wind resource map. ..................................................... 55 18 Appendix E- Worldwide wind power capacity 2008...................................... 56 19 Appendix F- Baja California wind resource map........................................... 58 20 References .......................................................................................................... 59 21 Vita ....................................................................................................................... 65 vii List of Tables Table 3-1 Total capacity of each independent power producer. .............................. 9 Table 4-1 Installed capacity share. ............................................................................. 13 Table 5-1 Wind projects in operation .......................................................................... 14 Table 5-2 Projects under construction 2009-2010.................................................... 15 Table 5-3 Projects planned for 2010-2012................................................................. 16 Table 5-4 Wind farms operated by the CFE .............................................................. 19 Table 7-1 Commercial scale wind turbine classes. .................................................. 26 Table 7-2 Gamesa G52 Power Curve ........................................................................ 31 Table 10-1 Wind farm characteristics. ........................................................................ 38 Table 12-1 Key descriptive statistics for the capacity factor ................................... 42 Table 12-2 Scenarios considered................................................................................ 44 Table 12-3 NPV and IRR .............................................................................................. 46 Table 12-4 Effect on NPV if start of operations is delayed. .................................... 47 Table 12-6 Analysis of variance (ANOVA) table ....................................................... 49 Table 12-7 Main effects................................................................................................. 49 Table E-2 Worldwide wind power capacity 2008 ...................................................... 56 viii List of of Figures Figure 2-1 Installed capacity share. .............................................................................. 7 Figure 2-2 Capacity for public service .......................................................................... 8 Figure 3-1 Independent power producers capacity share. ...................................... 10 Figure 5-1 Worldwide wind power