Utility Colbún has inaugurated a solar-plus-storage project with a 32MWh battery energy storage system in the Atacama region of Chile.
The Diego de Almagro project is a 330-hectare site comprising 470,000 solar panels totalling 230MW of power and a 8MW/32MWh BESS allowing for four hours of full power discharge.
The overall project totalled US$150 million of investment of which the BESS was US$11 million.
The project is Colbún’s first operational energy storage unit, the largest solar PV park in the Atacama region and also the “debut of this type of technology” there, the company claims.
Colbún plans to deploy 800MW of battery storage and have 4,000MW of renewable capacity online by 2030, having moved away from a model of procuring renewable energy from other companies. PV Tech spoke to the firm’s CEO José Ignacio Escobar for a piece in the most recent edition of quarterly journal PV Tech Power.
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