Equinor starts commercial operations at 140-MW Brazilian solar park

• Equinor’s Serra da Babilônia Solar is live, targeting 236 GWh a year.

Equinor has flipped the switch on the 140-MW Serra da Babilônia Solar project in Brazil, adding an expected 236 GWh of clean electricity annually—enough to power roughly 143,000 homes. Trading arm Danske Commodities will market the output locally, leveraging Brazil’s increasingly sophisticated wholesale dynamics. The plant expands Equinor’s Brazilian renewables footprint to about 600 MW of operating wind and solar, with a 1.5-GW development pipeline still to come via Rio Energy. 

Brazil offers enviable irradiation and a growing demand for firmed clean power, making hybridization the logical next step. While this project is solar-only, the market is moving toward co-located storage to smooth evening ramps and provide ancillary services along long transmission corridors. On the ground, modern designs—bifacial modules on trackers, string inverters, advanced SCADA—squeeze out extra kilowatt-hours and detect underperformance before it bites into annual yield.

Equinor’s presence lends heft to Brazil’s solar narrative: oil-and-gas majors are deploying real capital in markets where renewables economics are compelling on a standalone basis. Expect the company to apply trading and risk management expertise to stabilize revenues—particularly important in a market prone to hydrological swings and demand growth hotspots.

Taken together, Serra da Babilônia is another proof point that Brazil’s solar build is broadening from early movers to blue-chip sponsors with scale, sophisticated offtake, and a long runway.