Battery energy storage systems (BESS) will play an important role in reducing curtailment issues Chile has been facing in 2024, keynote speakers said at the third edition of Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit Latin America 2024 today.
The two-day event kicked off today (15 October) in Santiago, Chile, bringing together energy storage technology suppliers, policymakers, advisors, developers and operators active in the burgeoning Chilean market and more broadly across Latin America.
Keynote speaker and event chair Ana Lía Rojas, executive director at the Chilean renewable energy and energy storage association (ACERA), explained how as of September 2024, Chile has had nearly 3.5TWh of renewable energy curtailed since the start of the year. This represents a whole month of renewable energy production, according to Rojas.
Estimates for the whole year of 2024, taking into account numbers from the previous year, suggest Chile could end up with 4.5TWh of curtailed renewable energy by year’s end. As curtailment of solar PV and other renewable energy increases, BESS will play an important role in reducing the numbers while also helping in the decarbonisation of electricity during nighttime.
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The growth of BESS is accelerating fast with Chilean Energy Minister, Diego Pardow Lorenzo, highlighting nearly 500MW of output operational or going under testing currently in Chile. The Chilean Minister of Energy said that the country expects this to double by the end of the year with 1GW of BESS output operational or under testing. Eight projects are under construction for next year that will add 650MW of output.
One of the most pressing challenges according to Pardow Lorenzo are the ever growing systemic costs which need to be reduced and are “an obstacle to move forward” in Chile.
Pardow Lorenzo also mentioned the importance of long duration energy systems (LDES) in the long-term, which will be just as important as short-duration energy storage.
The Chilean government recently finalised regulations around payments to energy storage in the country’s capacity market, further helping pave the way for large-scale deployments.
In May, the Ministry of Energy opened a public land bidding auction for land capable of hosting 13GWh of BESS projects.
A large-scale market was made possible in late 2022 when the government enabled the operation of standalone energy storage in the electricity market. Until the only projects that had been progressed were co-located with solar PV and focused on reducing curtailment.
Click here for all energy storage news from Chile, including recent projects from CIP, Engie, Canadian Solar and Grenergy.
Energy Storage Summit Latin America will not only focus on Chile however, with grid-scale projects coming online in other parts of the region too. Just today Energy-Storage.news reported on a co-located 2MWh BESS set to be come online imminently in Colombia, claimed as the first such project in the country.
