Renewables to get boost from new grid law in Chile

Last week Chile’s Congress passed an updated Electricity Transmission Act, bringing good news for renewable energy developers, facing delays or generation curtailment due to the current grid constraints in the country.

The goal of the new law is to ensure adequate transmission capacity in support of the development of a competitive market and in order to allow clean electricity to travel from the place of generation to the regions where it is needed.

Working in that direction, Chile will complete next year the interconnection of its Northern Interconnected System Grid (SING) with the Central Interconnected System grid (SIC).

Chile has hit an installed solar photovoltaic (PV) power capacity of 1,217 MW and operational wind farm capacity of 947 MW as at the end of May 2016. Statistics by the country’s renewables centre CIFES show that several more gigawatts of wind and PV projects have secured environmental nods. Especially when it comes to solar power, all big projects are planned or built in the Northern Chile/Atacama desert region where interconnection is the main issue.

The new law also envisages the establishment of an Independent Coordinator for the electric system.

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