Chile's Atacama desert is becoming a global battery hub

ContourGlobal inaugurated a nearly $500 million hybrid solar-and-storage facility in Chile’s Atacama desert. The Victor Jara plant pairs 231 MWp of photovoltaic capacity with 1.3 GWh of battery storage. It can deliver 200 MW of power for up to 6.5 hours after sundown, providing long-duration utility-scale storage. The project is located in Chile’s Tarapacá region and is supported by a 15-year nighttime power purchase agreement with Copec EMOAC. It is ContourGlobal’s second solar-and-storage investment in Chile, following a similar system in Quillagua. The Atacama’s high solar irradiance creates daytime overgeneration that the grid cannot absorb, and battery storage reduces curtailment by shifting energy to nighttime demand.

"ContourGlobal, the independent power producer backed by KKR, has inaugurated a nearly $500 million solar-and-storage facility in Chile's Atacama desert that stores daytime solar energy and delivers it after sundown. The Victor Jara hybrid plant combines 231 megawatt-peak of photovoltaic capacity with 1.3 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, capable of delivering 200 megawatts of power for up to 6.5 hours at night. ContourGlobal calls it Latin America's longest-duration utility-scale battery system."

"The project sits in the Tarapacá region and is backed by a 15-year nighttime power purchase agreement with Copec EMOAC, the energy marketing and renewable power supply arm of Empresas Copec, one of Chile's largest industrial conglomerates. It is ContourGlobal's second solar-and-storage investment in Chile, following the launch of a similar system in Quillagua in the neighbouring Antofagasta region last year. Together, the two projects deliver 452 megawatt-peak of solar and 2.5 gigawatt-hours of battery storage."

"The Atacama desert receives some of the highest solar irradiance on Earth, making it one of the most productive locations in the world for photovoltaic generation. The problem is that the sun produces more electricity during the day than Chile's grid can absorb, resulting in routine curtailment, wasted energy from solar plants that are forced to shut down because there is nowhere for the power to go. Transmission bottlenecks between the solar-rich north and the demand centres further south make the problem worse."

Read at TNW | Battery