Central & South America

AES Corp. has switched on a 180 MW solar plant connected to 112 MWh of storage in Chile. The project in the Atacama Desert is Latin America’s largest solar plant to be linked to battery storage.

PV initiatives should be designed to last, as several well-meaning off-grid solar projects for the developing world have floundered over the years.

The authorities in Argentina have allocated 633.7 MW of renewables capacity in the nation’s latest procurement exercise. The assigned PV capacity comes from 44 planned solar farms.

In the assessment of scenarios for a sustainable and resilient energy transition in isolated systems in the Amazon, a portion of photovoltaic generators should be installed centrally in order to guarantee a central system of high performance, availability and reliability without clearing any further forest areas, while another significant portion of the generators should be installed distributed over rooftops and in agrivoltaic projects.

The European Commission and the European Investment Bank have agreed to collaborate with Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on hydrogen, while Masdar, Mitsubishi and Inpex have said that they will use green hydrogen to produce e-methane and polypropylene.

Guatemala’s latest energy auction has attracted 48 bidders for 235 MW of capacity. The auction has been oversubscribed, with more than 1 GW of project proposals submitted. The national regulator will announce the final results on Aug. 2.

Brazil has announced a new 2 GW solar strategy. It plans to build 2 million new social housing units by 2026 and will deploy two PV modules in each home, providing 1 kW of power per dwelling.

The Chilean authorities want to contract 5,400 GWh of power from renewable energy, while also including battery storage. The selected developers will secure 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Elera Renováveis has commissioned the 1.2 GW Janaúba solar complex. The facility, which went online this week, consists of 20 solar parks spread across 3,000 hectares.

Brazil’s distributed PV systems, including installations up to 5 MW in size, have surpassed 22 GW of cumulative capacity. By the end of June, more than 2 million arrays had been deployed nationwide.