James Lee Stancampiano, ContourGlobal’s general manager for South America, said: “The idea that the sun from the Tarapacá desert can light Chilean homes at night is not just a technical achievement — it’s a powerful illustration of where we want to take Chile’s energy system.”
The project was acquired from developer and IPP Grenergy, along with the Quillagua 1 and Quillagua 2 in Antofogasta, which total 221MW of solar and 1.2GWh of BESS.
At the time of acquisition these were the first three phases of Grenergy’s Oasis de Atacama collection of projects, which has seven phases totalling 4GW of solar PV and 11GWh of storage, being developed and sold to different companies. The fourth phase (272MW of solar, 1.1GWh BESS) was sold to investor CVC late last year.
Chile has become a hotbed of large-scale BESS activity as companies deploy BESS to shift solar PV production into night time hours, mitigating curtailment and negative pricing risk.
BESS projects have been completed by IPPs and power firms Zelestra, Innergex and Engie totalling around 1.5GWh of BESS capacity in the past few months alone. In April, investor Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners started building one of that size.
