Spanish renewable energy company Norvento Enerxía is expanding its focus in Latin America’s growing energy storage market, with Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Guatemala among its priority markets. The company plans to supply its new nXL power conversion technology to utility-scale storage projects while building on existing experience in microgrids and industrial self-consumption.
Norvento Enerxía, a renewable energy company based in Lugo, Galicia, Spain, wants to expand its presence in Latin America as energy storage deployment accelerates across the region. Founded as an engineering company and later expanding into wind and hydropower project development, Norvento added an industrial division in 2009 focused on manufacturing proprietary technology, mainly wind turbines and power electronics equipment.
Lucas López Piñeiro, Norvento’s business development manager, told pv magazine that the company already has experience in Latin America, although its activity to date has focused mainly on microgrids, industrial self-consumption and smaller-scale energy storage systems.
In Argentina, Norvento has worked with local partners for several years and has supplied equipment for commercial and industrial projects, López Piñeiro said. The company has also participated in projects in the Caribbean, particularly in the Dominican Republic, where he sees opportunities linked to energy security and the increasing deployment of solar power.
Many of these projects have used Norvento’s nGM converter family, with power ratings of between 50 kW and 200 kW. The equipment is designed for energy storage and microgrid applications, including off-grid systems combining PV, small wind turbines, conventional generation and batteries.
López Piñeiro said Norvento’s strength in the commercial and industrial segment is providing solutions for such microgrids.
Strategy for Latin America
Norvento’s new strategy in Latin America has a different scale. A key objective of its recent participation in Intersolar South America was to present the nXL family, designed for large-scale energy storage and solar generation projects.
López Piñeiro said Norvento does not necessarily intend to act as a full BESS integrator in the utility-scale segment. Instead, it will primarily supply power electronics to system integrators, battery manufacturers and developers capable of integrating complete systems.
This approach reflects the economics of energy storage projects, he said. Batteries account for around 70% to 75% of total system costs, while power electronics represent a substantially smaller share. As a result, full BESS integration and system-wide warranties are generally handled by the integrator or battery supplier.
nXL converters
The new nXL reaches up to 9 MVA per unit and is designed for large-scale energy storage installations. Norvento highlights its modular architecture, efficiency of close to 99% and advanced grid-support capabilities.
These include grid-forming and grid-following functions, voltage and frequency regulation, black start, STATCOM and active filtering. López Piñeiro expects these capabilities to become increasingly important as Latin American power systems integrate larger volumes of solar and wind generation.
Norvento also sees potential advantages in the equipment’s thermal design for several markets in the region. The nXL has a fully sealed IP65 enclosure and combines liquid cooling with HVAC.
According to López Piñeiro, this configuration allows the equipment to maintain its rated power at temperatures of up to 40 C while reducing maintenance requirements associated with air filters.
The company believes these characteristics could be particularly suitable for arid locations and areas exposed to high levels of dust, humidity or demanding temperatures, including parts of Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
Norvento’s international expansion in power technology is also coinciding with the development of a new factory in Lugo. The company is finalizing neFO, Norvento Enerxía Factory Zero, a facility of approximately 23,000 square meters dedicated to manufacturing power electronics equipment.
The project received €27.5 million ($32 million) from the European Commission’s Innovation Fund. López Piñeiro said the facility will have potential manufacturing capacity of up to 16 GW and will support Norvento’s industrialization process and the launch of its nXL product range.
Countries in focus
Norvento is not concentrating its Latin American strategy on a single country. López Piñeiro identified Brazil, Chile and Argentina, along with Mexico and Guatemala, as the company’s current focus markets. Peru and Colombia are also on its radar, although they are not currently among its priority markets.
He considers Chile one of the clearest examples of how the region’s storage market could evolve. Strong growth in solar and wind generation, combined with transmission constraints and curtailment, has accelerated the deployment of energy storage.
López Piñeiro said similar dynamics are beginning to emerge in other countries.
He argued that having generation capacity alone is not enough, as power must also be available when it is needed.
He sees Argentina, Mexico and Guatemala incorporating storage into new procurement mechanisms in an effort to avoid some of the problems encountered by markets after deploying large volumes of renewable generation.
Brazil could play a particularly important role in this development. Norvento is monitoring the evolution of capacity procurement mechanisms and potential local-content requirements. López Piñeiro said the company is assessing how it could adapt if such requirements eventually affect the participation of foreign suppliers.
For now, however, Norvento has not announced plans for an industrial presence in Brazil.
Beyond the regulatory differences between individual markets, López Piñeiro identified a common factor across much of the region: growing solar and wind capacity is increasing the need for resources that can provide flexibility and firm power to electricity systems.
He said energy storage is the key tool available to renewable generation for providing this firmness.
In his view, growth in Brazil could also have a knock-on effect across Latin America by attracting integrators, manufacturers and developers to the region.
Norvento wants to be present wherever integrators and developers capable of integrating storage are building projects, López Piñeiro said. The company sees Chile as evidence of the potential for the market and expects Brazil to help accelerate the development of energy storage across Latin America.
From pv magazine LatAm
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