Chile

The Chinese manufacturer has signed an agreement with Enel Green Power Chile to supply its 1500 Vdc central inverters to a PV plant at Copiapó, the largest to be built in the country to date.

The government is planning to replace the price offered to PV projects that have a capacity of 3-9 MW with hourly tariffs. Solar association Acesol agrees with some of the suggestions but rejects the proposed tariff change. The current system has been the main market driver for Chilean PV for the last two years.

Mining giant Anglo American has installed an 84 kW floating array at a copper mine in Chile’s Valparaiso Region. The project was developed by Lenergie with the floating technology of Ciel&Terre.

In both Belgium and Chile, the planned mandatory installation of smart meters is raising concerns among consumers, residential PV system owners and the solar industry. Although seen as a positive, the early stages of smart meter deployment create issues related to the calculation of net metering tariffs and the management and ownership of consumption data, as well as additional costs for consumers.

The plant is being built by Spanish developer Solarpack in the Atacama desert. The project was selected in an energy auction held by the Chilean government in 2016. At the time, Solarpack’s bid of $29.1/MWh was a record low for solar.

While solar is lauded as a cheap energy resource in OECD countries, the cost of financing PV projects in developing nations has impeded progress. Development banks and the Clean Technology Fund they finance have played a key role in providing access to cheap financing for clean energy projects in many markets.

Public body Codesser wants to hire experts to carry out a “Study to determine the participation of national suppliers in the provision of construction, operation and maintenance components and services in solar energy projects in Chile”.

The Spanish company has agreed with the Canadian CarbonFree the sale and construction of four new solar plants in Chile worth $33 million.

Some 8,891 hectares could be allocated through the tender, in the form of 179 plots of land in the northern and southernmost regions of the country.

The Technological Institute for Solar Energy, Low Emissions Mining and Advanced Materials of Lithium and other materials, will be set up with a mixture of public funding and 30% private investment.