The renewables arm of multinational energy firm Enel has started work on a project combining wind turbines and a 34MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in Chile.
Enel Green Power Chile is investing US$190 million in the project which pairs 22 wind turbines of 4.8MW each, totalling 105.6MW of power, and a 34.3MW lithium-ion BESS.
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The La Cabaña wind farm will be located in the Araucanía Region in the municipality of Angol. Enel did not spell out explicitly if the BESS will charge directly from the wind or just share grid connection and other infrastructure, but Fabrizio Barderi, the firm’s general manager for Chile, indicated in a press release it is most likely the former.
“Through the development of La Cabaña, we are also continuing our strategy of hybridisation of non-conventional renewable generation plants. This wind project is Enel Chile’s first using storage batteries, through which we will have greater flexibility in managing the plant,” he said.
As Energy-Storage.news reported in October, Chile has passed major legislation which aims to incentivise the deployment of energy storage and EV technology at scale. For energy storage, it will allow standalone systems to receive income from dispatching their energy and power in the country’s National Electric System market.
Most energy storage projects in the country to-date have been co-located with large solar PV arrays (read all of Energy-Storage.news’ coverage of these here). As everywhere, co-location with wind in Chile is at a much earlier stage due to much more onerous cycling requirements on the battery and a much larger battery size required.
However, Engie Chile last year won project rights to develop two hybrid systems combining solar, wind and battery storage with a combined capacity of 1.5GW. And Statkraft, which has acquired wind projects in development in Chile, told Energy-Storage.news a few months later that it was considering pairing a 1GWh BESS with a 100MW wind array.