However, unconventional energy provision has surged in recent years, with solar farms representing 6.5% of the matrix, wind power 5% and biomass 2.1% in 2018, according to the power generation companies’ association.īut CSP is not the only renewables technology to have stumbled. The prices Abengoa had agreed in a contract to supply to the national grid were three times higher than the present day’s.Ĭhile’s electricity generation matrix relies primarily on largely imported fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil (55%), and its own hydroelectric plants (30%). He called for more modest CSP plants making up a smaller part of the energy mix, supplying power only when other sources are offline. “Today it makes no economic sense to generate with CSP during the day, because that’s what photovoltaics are for and they are much cheaper,” González told Reuters. A fourth had been scrapped but was recently revived by EIG, the fund confirmed to Reuters. However, three of those have since been scrapped, the companies involved confirmed to Reuters, without elaborating. Corfo’s Solar Committee said five plants with a planned capacity of between 70MW and 450MW had environmental permits approved in the past four years. The market had been flooded with cheap solar panels from China that had helped accelerate Chile’s targets, but meant that Cerro Dominador’s output was only useful for the half of the day not covered by the panels, according to Cristián González, solar energy projects coordinator at state development agency Corfo.
private equity firm EIG Global Energy Partners, it was no longer competitive, or particularly sustainable. “With 112 plants like this one, Chile would be autonomous in energy matters,” said Manuel Sánchez.īut two years later, Abengoa came close to bankruptcy and was forced to sell Cerro Dominador, slowing construction of the plant as new buyers were sought.īy the time the plant was resurrected last year with funding from banks, the Chilean state and U.S. The project was hailed by government and industry as a key component of Chile’s vow to wean itself off imported fossil fuels and large hydroelectric centers, which are struggling to stay online amid a persistent and deepening drought.Ĭerro Dominador uses tens of thousands of pivoting mirrors to reflect the sun’s rays onto a smaller area, where they can be converted into thermal energy via a liquefied salt heat storage system to drive electric turbines.Īt its launch in 2014, the then-chief executive of the company building the project, Spain's Abengoa ABG.MC, told his audience that Cerro Dominador would cut CO2 emissions by 643,000 tonnes each year and bolster the Chilean government's bid to depend on "clean, competitive and sustainable" energy.
It represented Latin America’s first venture into the technology, called Concentrating Solar Power (CSP). That would help Chile make the leap to obtaining 60% of its power from renewables by 2035 and 70% by 2050, becoming, as environment minister Carolina Schmidt described it, “the Saudi Arabia of clean energy.”Įnter Cerro Dominador, a $1.3 billion project announced in 2013, touting technology designed to make the renewable energy supply more stable.Ĭerro Dominador’s unique selling point is that - unlike traditional photovoltaic solar plants or wind powered-plants, which produce as long as their source is shining or blowing - it allows the sun’s heat to be stored to generate electricity for hours afterwards, including at night.
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But in a bid to hold other countries to further-reaching pledges, it is now looking for ways to bring forward its own deadlines.Ī surge in lower cost solar panels from China in recent years has helped to place it within a whisker of its target to get 20% of its power from renewables by 2025.Ī key concern now is how to store and transmit its bountiful solar and wind power, spreading it over 24 hours. Cerro Dominador Solar Power Plant/Handout via REUTERSĬhile, readying to host a major United Nations climate change conference in December, has already pledged to phase out coal-fired power by 2040 and be carbon neutral by 2050. A general view of the Cerro Dominador Solar Power Plant is pictured in the commune of Maria Elena in the Antofagasta Region, Chile, July 1, 2019.
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