AES Gener has held a virtual groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on a 112MW / 560MWh battery energy storage system project in Chile, Latin America.
Multinational electric power generation and distribution company AES Corporation’s local subsidiary said the system, which can store power from nearby solar and wind facilities for up to five hours, is the biggest battery storage system in Latin America to date as well as being Chile’s first solar-plus-storage project.
“This type of investment is a concrete demonstration of the important role of the energy sector in the post-COVID green recovery,” Chile’s energy minister Juan Carlos Jobet, who attended the event along with AES Gener CEO Ricardo Falú and AES Gener’s chairman of the board, Julián Nebreda, said.
“We must continue to make decisive progress in the incorporation of renewable energies to clean the generation matrix. This will allow us to have greater energy independence and create jobs that are so necessary for the green economic recovery,” Minister Jobet said.
The batteries will be paired with 253MW of renewable energy generation, including the 180MW Andes Solar II B project in Antofagasta. Andes Solar II B will be built with 10MW of modular, prefabricated solar PV panels and 170MW of bifacial solar PV panels of the type AES Gener has already deployed in the 80MW Andes Solar II A project which has already begun construction.
The solar energy to be integrated into the national electricity system with the batteries will be built on mountain ranges in Antofagasta in the Atacama Desert, enjoying a combination of high solar irradiance at relatively low temperatures. Meanwhile, the output of the 73MW Campo Lindo wind farm being built in the Bío Bío region in the central south of Chile will also be integrated using the storage system. Campo Lindo is the first phase of a total 480MW cluster of wind turbines being built in the region, near the city of Los Ángeles.
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