three different developers announced separate large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) projects collocated with solar farms in Chile.
Enel Chile, the local subsidiary of Italian energy company Enel, said it will deploy a ground PV Mounting of 67 MW/134 MWh battery at the El Manzano solar power plant. The solar project with a capacity of 99 MW is located in the town of Tiltil, in the Chacabuco Province, Santiago Metropolitan Region. The solar plant is deployed on 185 hectares of land and features 162,000 bifacial monocrystalline panels of 615 W and 610 W.
In a separate press release, Portuguese EPC contractor CJR Renewable announced that it had been contracted by America-based Atlas Renewable to construct a 200 MW/800 MWh battery energy storage system ( BESS). The system will be paired with the 244 MWp Sol del Desierto photovoltaic plant, which is in operation since 2022 and located in the town of María Elena, the Tocopilla Province, in the Antofagasta region.
CJR Renewables will act as the main contractor for the civil and electrical works on the project which will feature 320 battery units provided by Chinese manufacturer Sungrow. "With this project, we've reached 523 MW in BESS facilities in Chile," said Raúl Pérez, business and development manager at CJR Renewables.
With 582,930 solar panels distributed over 479 hectares, Sol del Desierto generates around 714 GWh per year. The PV plant has been operating under a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) inked between Atlas Renewable Energy and Engie Energía Chile, the Chilean unit of French energy giant Engie, supplying 550 GWh of electricity annually.
In another separate development, Spanish developer Uriel Renovables announced it had obtained preliminary approval for the 90 MW Quinquimo solar farm collocated with a 90 MW/200 MWh BESS facility. Construction on this project is expected to begin in 2025 in an area located 150 km north of Santiago de Chile, in the Valparaíso Region.
