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| Fig. 1: Image of the Cerro Dominador solar plant in the Antofagasta Region of Chile" (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
As the world faces the challenge of transitioning to cleaner energy sources, Chile is well-positioned to lead the way in South America. With an aim to transition to a cleaner and more sustainable energy system, the Chilean government has set a target to meet up to 70% of the electrical energy generated from renewable sources by 2050. [1] This move is expected to address the country's increasing energy demand, which is estimated to rise by 30.6% by 2050. Among the various renewable energy sources available, solar energy has emerged as a promising option, especially in the northern regions, where the Atacama Desert provides one of the highest average daily global horizontal irradiation. [2] However, the challenge remains to distribute this solar- generated energy to the central part of the country, which hosts a large population and industries. [3]
While the Chilean governments plan to transition to higher renewable energy consumption is aligned with the world's efforts to mitigate climate change, it will not come without challenges. In this context, its essential to make an assessment of the current state of energy production and consumption in the country and contrast it with the projections for the future.
The largest energy facility in Chile is the Cerro Dominador Solar Power Plant (see Fig. 1), a 220-megawatt (MW) combined concentrated solar power and photovoltaic plant, the first of its kind to be built in Latin America. This system produces solar energy through the use of lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto a receiver. The resulting heat energy, generated by the concentrated light, powers a heat engine, typically a steam turbine, that drives an electrical power generator or a thermochemical reaction to produce electricity. At the Cerro Dominador Solar Power Plant, energy production comes from both Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaics (PV): 110 from CSP and 110 from PV. The construction of the plant started in 2017 and had a total cost of approximately $ 1400 million USD. The primary funding sources were the Inter-American development bank, the World Bank Clean Technology Fund, KfW, and the European Union, contributing 100 million in total between the first three and 15 million coming from the EU. In terms of performance, the plant reached an energy production of 304 GWh. [4,5]
In order to get a better sense of the impact of solar energy on the Chilean governments energy plan, it would be convenient to review quantitative data on some other relevant solar projects in Chile.
The Amanecer Solar CAP plant was launched in June 2014 in the Atacama Desert near Copiap with a capacity of 100 megawatts (MW). The plant has the potential to produce 270 gigawatt- hours (GWh) of electricity annually and was the largest in Latin America at that time of construction, with a total cost of construction of 250m USD. [6]
The last example is the El Romero single-axis tracking solar photovoltaic plant, which will generate 505GWh of clean energy per year. It included 776,000 PV modules and had a construction period of 13 months, with the total investment amounting to $343 million USD. [7]
Given that, in Chile, the total electricity consumption in 2020 was 80.7 TWh, we can make an approximated calculation of the percentage of the total energy consumption that these three main solar energy projects represent: [8]
| Cerro Dominador: | 304 × 109 Wh 82.7 × 10 12 Wh |
= | 3.7 × 10-3 | (0.37%) | |
| Amanecer CAP: | 270 × 109 Wh 82.7 × 10 12 Wh |
= | 3.3 × 10-3 | (0.33%) | |
| El Romero: | 505 × 109 (Wh) 82.7 × 10 12 (Wh) |
= | 6.1 × 10-3 | (0.61%) |
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