Neiva has seen many big announcements, but this one came with panels, cables, and a real on-switch. In just 79 days, ElectroHuila finished and inaugurated its first solar farm, and it did it without outside funding.
The site is called Granja Solar El Bote, built next to the El Bote substation on the road to Palermo. It is a small plant by global standards, but it carried a loud message, public utilities can build clean power too.
The investment reached around US$928,000. For many locals, that sounded like a simple promise, clean energy made in Huila, with Huila’s own hands.
A public utility goes solar
ElectroHuila’s El Bote project was presented as a national first, the first solar plant built by a public energy company in Colombia, among seven state electrification companies. That kind of milestone matters in a sector where large generation projects often belong to big private players.
The opening drew high-level attention. Mines and Energy Minister Edwin Palma Egea attended the inauguration and publicly highlighted the leadership of Manager Nika Cuellar.
The message was clear, more public distributors should get into generation to reduce dependence on market prices.
Location was not an accident. Putting the solar farm next to a substation made it easier to connect and operate as part of the local network. It also turned a regular roadside stretch into a visible sign of the energy transition.
What 990 kW means for Granja Solar El Bote
El Bote entered operation with 990 kW of installed capacity and 1,620 solar panels. In simple terms, it is a compact plant designed to feed electricity into the nearby distribution system.
In Colombia, distributed generation is defined as producing electricity with a plant under 1 MW, located near consumption centers and connected to the local distribution system. At 990 kW, El Bote fit right under that limit.
Distributed generation can help because power is produced closer to where it is used. That can reduce the need to move electricity long distances, and it can strengthen the local grid when demand rises.
It also changed the conversation about scale. Instead of waiting years for huge projects, a utility can add smaller plants in more places, faster. For Huila, El Bote became a “first step” that proved the model can work.
Built fast, built in-house
ElectroHuila built the plant with a team of 17 workers, rather than outsourcing the job. Finishing in 79 days meant long shifts and tight coordination, plus a lot of pressure to get details right.
The work followed Colombian technical rules used in the power sector, including CREG, CNO, and RETIE. That sounds boring, but those rules are what keep a project safe and legal when it connects to the grid.
RETIE, for example, is Colombia’s mandatory technical regulation for electrical installations, designed to protect life and health and reduce electrical risks. So even a “small” solar farm still has to meet serious safety requirements.
The project also became a human story. The company publicly listed the names of the workers responsible for the build, giving credit to the team behind the hardware. That detail matters in places where public projects often feel anonymous.
Granja Solar El Bote delivers clean power for 700 homes
The plant was expected to produce about 1.9 GWh per year. ElectroHuila also framed it in daily-life terms, enough electricity for around 700 homes.
Environmental impact was part of the pitch. Operation was expected to avoid about 800 tons of CO2 per year, and it was compared to preserving more than 38,000 trees annually. Those numbers helped people picture the benefit without needing an engineering degree.
The plant also plugged into a bigger narrative. The project was linked to Colombia’s energy transition goals and the national development agenda that promotes cleaner growth. For a regional utility, aligning with that national direction can open doors for more projects.
A small plant, a loud message
El Bote did not need to be huge to matter. With 990 kW, it stayed in the distributed generation category, and it still proved that a public utility could design, fund, and build a solar plant on its own. That example can travel faster than any press release.
For people in Huila, the takeaway was simple, local sun became local electricity, built by local workers. If more projects follow, this first solar farm will be remembered as the moment ElectroHuila moved from buying energy to also making it.