On Monday, SunPower connected Project Salvador to the grid in Chile's Atacama Desert. At 70 MW this is the second-largest PV plant to go online in the Chile, which is Latin America's largest solar market.
SunPower provided engineering, procurement and construction services for the project.
Salvador is also the largest merchant solar plant to be completed in the world, which means that the plant holds no power purchase agreement and sells the electricity it generates on the spot market. This is a business model which Chile is leading due to a combination of conditions including high spot prices for electricity in certain nodes in the nation's Central Grid (SIC), where Project Salvador is located.
SunPower CEO Tom Werner has said that he sees room for more merchant projects in Chile, and expects the model to spread to other nations. "Think of it as the beginning of a trend that we are going to see in the rest of the world," Werner told pv magazine.
The plant is owned 70% by Etrion, 20% by SunPower's parent company Total and 10% by a Chilean developer, and incorporates SunPower's high-efficiency PV modules and its Oasis Power Block technology.
In many ways, the project owes its existence to the United States. Project Salvador received a project loan through the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) which covered 70% of the US$200 million in project costs. OPIC is the largest lender supporting a boom of large utility-scale projects in Chile, and as of June 2014 had provided $887 million to five solar projects, including the 100 MW Amanecer project.
Popular content
Project Salvador is sited on land leased from the Chilean government, and connected to the SIC grid through the power infrastructure of state-owned copper mining company Codelco. SunPower will operate and maintain Project Salvador through a long-term, fixed-price operation and maintenance contract.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.