Enel Chile, a subsidiary of Italian energy company Enel, has received authorisation from the National Electricity Coordinator to begin commercial operations of a 99MW solar PV plant in Chile.
Located within the Metropolitan Region, where the capital Santiago de Chile is located, the El Manzano plant includes 162,000 bifacial panels.
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The company is exploring the hybridisation of its plant with the integration of a battery energy storage system (BESS) which would provide a 67MW and two-hour duration capacity. The storage project is under development and expected to be completed during the first half of 2024.
This is not the first solar-plus-storage in the Metropolitan Region the company will be building. Last year, it started construction of an 80MW solar-plus-storage project – dubbed Don Humberto – with a 67MW BESS output.
Hybridisation of solar PV projects in Chile has been rising in the country last year since the passing of a bill in late 2022 that facilitated the deployment of energy storage, as covered by our sister site Energy-Storage.news.
Fabrizio Barderi, general manager at Enel Chile, said: “The plant will inject the energy generated into the National Electric System, thus helping to overcome the challenges posed by the lack of transmission infrastructure and ensuring that renewable energy is available to meet the high demand in urban areas.”
Enel’s Chilean subsidiary currently has more than 1.8GW of installed solar capacity in the country, a slight decrease from the 2GW of capacity it used to have last year as it sold four solar plants in October to independent power producer Sonnedix with a combined capacity of 416MW.