The Atacama Desert is Chile’s solar treasure, but also a headache for its electrical grid

He Atacama desertin Chile, is one of the most fascinating places on the planet. It is the driest desert in the world, with rainfall of 0.1 millimeters on average, which means it is 250 times drier than the Sahara, where it rains an average of 25 mm per year. Due to its conditions, it has a bacterial colony of unique conditions and, from time to time, when it rains a little more, is covered with flowers. Human action, however, is transforming it.

It has become a gigantic garbage dump due to fast fashion culture and we are even finishing with the ancient geoglyphs (one of the “other Nazcas”). Beyond all this, Atacama is an ideal point to place solar panels due to its solar irradiation, where there are already more than 500 operational solar projects and a hundred under construction.

Atacama. Despite the environmental impact and costs, filling the deserts with solar panels seems like a good idea to reach the decarbonization and emissions objectives that many countries in the world have set for 2030 and 2050. In the case of Atacama, we have a desert of about 105,000 square kilometers that has very stable conditions throughout the year and is the region on the planet with the highest solar radiation.

A study published last year showed the result of five years measuring sunshine in a specific area of ​​the desert. Horizontal shortwave irradiance results of 308 W/m² were achieved, the highest in the world. During the solstices, this value increases to a record of 2,177 W/m².

Solar power. These figures have seduced energy companies that are betting on renewable energies and, despite the difficulties when placing and cleaning panels in the desert (in Atacama a new way of removing dust from solar panels is being investigated) , there are many projects that are already operating in the region. One of them is the Guanchoi plant.

This photovoltaic park, owned by Enel Green Power Chile, started It began operating last year and has an installed capacity of 398 MW and is expected to produce more than 1,100 GWh, which will supply energy to more than one million homes. To do this, 893,508 panels are used with bifacial technology that collect radiation on both sides, generating an average of 14% more electricity compared to conventional panels.

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and solar thermal. This plant is one of the 550 that are operational in the country, generating nine GW of power and it is expected that next year another hundred plants will begin operating that will contribute an additional 2.6 GW to the network. However, all that irradiation can be used for other purposes, an example being the Cerro Dominador plant.

It is a solar thermal plant with a power of 210 MW and an annual production of 950 GWh that is based on a system of hundreds of mirrors that focus sunlight onto a series of axes in which that energy is concentrated. Subsequently, it is transferred to a water tank, which generates steam due to heat to power a turbine that transforms that kinetic energy into electrical energy.

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Too much production. However, all that glitters is not gold. In El País Chile they have spoken with one of the managers of the Guanchoi plant, who states that production expectations were exceeded during the first months and that the problem is that they could not produce at their maximum. The main drawback is that the transmission infrastructure has not developed in Chile at the speed that the photovoltaic parks have, creating a bottleneck in the system.

Challenges. Flavio Cozzolino is responsible for operation and maintenance at Enel Green Power and states that “this delay creates part of the limitation due to the reduction in transportation capacity between the northern zone, where the majority of the country’s solar capacity is concentrated, and the central area where there is an important consumer center”. They affirm that there are already projects to expand and improve infrastructure, but in the meantime, storing the surplus may be a solution.

The bad thing is that the production is so high that the batteries would fall short. Rodrigo Palma is the director of the Solar Energy Research Center of Chile and has confirmed a delay in these energy transmission works, which is slowing down solar development in Chile. Palma comments that “if we have a perspective of developing 20 GW, where we already have 9 GW, there are important barriers in transmission, something that should concern different sectors. And, of course, these developments must be carried out with respect for the environment. and its biodiversity”.

Because, in the end, it is of no use to have an irradiation comparable to Venus if the energy is wasted because the electric “highways” that must take it to homes are not prepared to withstand the load.

Images | Google Maps, Guanchoi, Diego Delso

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