CAP sues SunEdison, alleging poor quality PV modules

Chile’s largest mining group is taking the bankrupt renewable energy developer to court, alleging that the Amanecer PV plant is not producing the contracted output.

August 8, 2016 Christian Roselund and Blanca Díaz López

The Amanecer solar project was the largest in Latin America when built at 101 MW.

Even before filing for bankruptcy in April, SunEdison had been suffering from the weight of multiple lawsuits. More recently this included a suit by Vivint Solar for breach of contract due to the failed acquisition.

Today SunEdison’s woes continued with the filing of lawsuit by CAP in Chilean courts, related to the Amanecer solar project which SunEdison built and which has been supplying the mining giant with 15% of its electricity.

At least, that is what was expected under the terms of the 20-year contract. However, according to an article in Chile’s Pulso (in Spanish) the mining company is alleging that SunEdison violated terms of the contract and supplied poor quality modules, resulting in reduced output.

In the article, SunEdison Chile notes that as it has not been served court documents, and thus cannot comment on the specific allegations. The company did not respond to a pv magazine request for comment by press time.

Mercom Capital CEO Raj Prabhu says that he is surprised by the nature of the allegations. “SunEdison was known for quality project build,” Prabhu told pv magazine.

Amanecer was the largest PV project in Latin America when built, and remains one of the largest. It is currently held by SunEdison yieldco TerraForm Power. SunEdison had been pulling out of Chile for some time; the company cancelled the purchase of projects from Latin American Power last fall, and shortly after bankruptcy sold two projects to Chilean power company Colbún.

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