Spain-based developer and IPP Grenergy has detailed its investment plans for 2023-2026, totalling US$2.6 billion including what it claimed is the ‘largest BESS in the world’ in Chile.
According to its Strategic Plan 2023-2026, the IPP will commit US$2.6 billion to these expansions, with US$1.5 billion allocated to solar PV and US$800 million to energy storage. Of its three major operational markets – the US, Europe and Latin America – Grenergy highlighted Chile as a fulcrum for leveraging up its solar and storage businesses.
To support the planned growth, the company said that it expects to continue to expand its asset rotation model through 2026, by which it funds projects at certain points and sells them to more well-positioned investors at a later stage. The company said that it expects to sell between 350MW-450MW of solar PV capacity and 1GWh of storage capacity to the market annually, generating around US$600 million by 2026.
Earlier this year, it signed power purchase agreements (PPA) for solar projects in Chile and Spain with respective capacities of 241MW and 259MW.
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Both of these are pivotal markets for Grenergy, and Chile featured most prominently in its Strategic Plan announcement. In addition to its solar PV assets in the country, which add to over 900MW across operational and pipeline projects, the company said that “Chile will be key to the company’s growth in the storage sector”.
It said that construction had begun on the Oasis de Atacama battery storage project, which will be the “largest in the world” with 4.1GWh capacity and a further 1GW of solar PV generation. The project will represent a total US$1.4 billion. It will be built in five phases and will ‘come on stream’ over the next 36 months.
“Today, Chile is a superpower in terms of the development of energy storage due to the exceptional conditions of the Atacama Desert in terms of hours of solar radiation and the particularity of the energy mix of this vast area, where the penetration of solar energy reaches 50%,” said David Ruiz de Andrés, CEO of Grenergy.
The grid-scale energy storage market in Chile is taking off with significant opportunities in the capacity market and renewable load shifting, with some 735GWh of renewable energy curtailed in the first five months of 2023 alone.
