Energy

EnergyEPM holds a significant position in Colombia’s electricity sector, with a 21.11% share of the demand serviced across the country. For more than five decades, it has constructed the backbone of Colombia’s hydroelectric system. After many years of experience in developing this type of project, it is progressing in the search for other sources of energy as a way of contributing to the environmental sustainability of the planet. In turn, this opens up other opportunities for the company’s national and international growth.

Strong operational and commercial management, together with the ability to build relationships and confidence with the international and Colombian financial sectors, is the basis of an electricity system with assets valued at $21.8 billion in 2010.

  • Net effective energy generation system capacity in 2011: 3,257.61 MW (megawatts), including 660 MW (megawatts) from Porce III.
  • Energy distribution system: 16.2% of the national total.
  • Piped gas: 9% share in the Colombian market.


  • Hydroelectric power plants: 25.
  • Thermal power plants: 1, La Sierra, located in the Puerto Nare municipality, Antioquia.
  • Wind farms: 1, Jepírachi, in the Colombian Alta Guajira.

EPM guarantees the reliability of the Colombian electric system. Its “energy generation” process has quality certification in the operation and maintenance of its main generation power plants.

Porce III is EPM’s most recently constructed hydroelectric power plant. The first unit, with a 660-megawatt capacity, began generating electricity in December 2010, and the three remaining machines will gradually come into service in 2011, until it is fully operational.

EPM plays an important role in the electric spectrum in Colombia, and has taken on new challenges through its research in the field of alternative energies. This is shown by its pioneering experience in the “Jepírachi” project, which uses wind energy, and by the micro-generating plants at La Vuelta and La Herradura, which fulfill conditions established in the Kyoto Protocol for Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM).

  • Transmission and distribution lines (km): 64,107.
  • Transformers: 107,062.
  • Substations: 134.

Special or large-load connections: these offer individual clients connection service to energy transport systems (NTS, RTS, and LDS).

PM has the ISO 90001:2000 Certification of Quality for the operation process of the National Transmission System (NTS), and the operational and maintenance infrastructure of substations and lines, installations, street lighting and Christmas decorative lighting.

Throughout the rest of Colombia, EPM reaches 340 municipalities in the Eje Cafetero (Coffee-Growers Axis) through its CHEC and EDEQ subsidiaries, and to the east of the country through power companies ESSA and CENS, each operating respectively in the departments of Santander and North Santander.

In total, EPM’s Colombian energy subsidiaries service more than 5,304,234 inhabitants outside Antioquia and have 2,569 employees that cover an area of 74,982 square kilometers.

In Central America, the EPM Group is the largest distributor of energy. Its subsidiaries have 940,000 clients in Guatemala, 320,000 clients in El Salvador, and 360,000 clients in Panama.