Renewable

March 13 (Renewables Now) - Italy’s Building Energy SpA has opened the 8.2-MW DC Queule solar photovoltaic (PV) park in the Chilean region of O’Higgins, the company announced on Tuesday.

Building Energy’s joint venture (JV) with Italian mini-hydro specialist Scotta Group was in charge of developing the Queule plant with an investment of USD 9.5 million (EUR 8.4m) using the financing provided by Chilean lender Banco Security. The Santiago-based JV, named Building Energy Andes SpA, was established in early 2018 for the purpose of developing projects in Latin America starting with a 30-MW solar and hydropower pipeline.

The Queule solar park is located in the municipality of Las Cabras where it will produce 16 GWh of electricity per year to power more than 13,500 local households, Building Energy said.

In 2018, Building Energy secured financing of around USD 19 million to build four solar and one mini-hydropower plant totalling 21.5 MW in Chile’s central regions. The projects are developed under the Chilean small-scale distributed generation programme, locally known as PMGD, which regulates schemes of up to 9 MW.

Over the course of 2018, Building Energy switched on three 3.5-MW plants, Peralillo, Villa Prat and Alto Solar, with Queule now being the latest of those four to begin operations.

The construction of the 2.7-MW La Confianza mini-hydropower plant has been underway since recently, Building Energy said.

Building Energy Andes also has a 30-MW portfolio under development, for which it will require an investment of approximately USD 30 million. One of the projects, the 9-MW Punitaqui PV park, is expected to become operational by the end of 2019.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.89)