Chile moves on storage to ‘decarbonize the night’
Image: Engie Chile
From ESS News
Solar and energy storage deployment is booming in Chile, spurred on by supportive government policy that has been markedly stable for 15 years. Indeed, the nation leads Latin America in this sector today, along with Brazil.
To put this in context, nonconventional renewable energy (NCRE), as it’s called in Chile, accounts for up to 17.3 GW of installed capacity in the Andean country, representing 48% of the total system and 40% of Chile’s electricity generation. Solar alone accounts for 10.9 GW of operational installed capacity, with an additional 3.2 GW under construction, according to the National Energy Commission’s June 2025 report on the NCRE sector.
Felipe Gallardo, director of studies at the Chilean Association of Renewable Energy and Storage (ACERA), said several factors have driven the growth of photovoltaics. One is the country’s abundant solar resources. Gallardo also points to “the decline in development costs experienced by renewable technologies, the favorable conditions for financing projects through long-term PPAs, and the activation of a coal power plant retirement plan currently underway.”