Unsubsidized PV December, 2009: A 10 MW PV farm in Chile is being planned without direct subsidies © Solarpack Corporación Tecnológica SL  Que Sera, Sera: This photomontage shows a planned 10 MW solar plant to be located in the Calama region of northern Chile, an area with a solar radiation among the highest in the world – over 2,500 kWh/m2 per year. Back in July, Marcelo Tokman, the minister of Chile’s Ministry of Energy (MOE), and Jon Segovia, the head of Spanish-headquartered PV integrator Corporación Tecnológica SL, announced plans for the construction of Chile’s first industrial-scale solar farm. This 10 MW installation is destined to become Latin America’s first large-scale PV power plant. But not the last. The Chilean government intends it to be the first of many built in the north of the country. Known as Calama Solar I, the project is scheduled to go into operation within 8 months of work starting on the site. »We expect to finalize the power purchase agreements (PPA) and funding in 2009 and to finish Calama I in 2010,« says Pablo Burgos Galíndez, managing director of Solarpack. »In parallel, we will also start making preparations for Calama II.« The installation, supported by the MOE, is expected to be built on a 161 acre site in the Calama region in the north of the country on state-owned land made available to the Spanish firm on a concessionary basis. The location’s key feature is the amount of solar radiation it receives – the region records over 2,500 kWh/m2 annually. Overseeing an investment of $40 million, Solarpack will be responsible for manufacturing, assembling, operating and maintaining the plant, which will be connected to Chile’s medium-voltage Interconected System of Norte Grande (SING) grid. In this region, heavy industry – particularly copper mining – accounts for 80 to 90 percent of electricity consumption, the main motivation for setting up the plant. Nevertheless, the electricity generated is not intended solely for industrial use. »Part of the output will be consumed by the local population,« says Burgos Galíndez. The Solarpack executive adds that if the initiative progresses as envisaged, the company will double the facility’s capacity to 20 MW in the near future, »possibly as early as 2010.« Provided that everything goes to plan, within 3 years investment could rise to as much as $250 million with installed capacity reaching 60 MW, the equivalent to six Calama I-size plants. The plant will be fitted with 133,056 tracker-mounted solar panels. Although the modules and inverters will all be imported, »a significant proportion of the materials and workers will be local,« says Burgos Galíndez. »The only staff we will bring over from Spain will be our specialist engineers, as Chile has plenty of skilled installers.« The project has been submitted for an environmental impact assessment, a first for a PV facility in Chile. As a result, the design has been made public, but details on the module type and whether Solarpack plans to use single-axis or dual-axis trackers have not been published, information that Burgos Galíndez declined to disclose. Speaking from Solarpack’s headquarters in the northern Spanish city of Getxo, the company executive would only reveal an expected installed cost of about $4 per W. PHOTON International estimates the plant’s solar electricity production will cost about 20¢ per kWh, nearly twice the electric spot market rates in the Calama region of 12.7¢ per kWh in August. Regarding the financing side, Burgos Galíndez, while not giving an amount, says that Solarpack itself is going to be a partial investor in the project. The remaining funds will come from local investors, bank loans and a Chilean equity investment fund. At present, Chile does not offer firms any direct incentives at either a national or regional level for this type of project. But electricity suppliers that fail to comply with the conditions of a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) face penalties. Under Chilean law, they have to demonstrate that »non-conventional renewable energies,« including PV, account for 5 percent of the electricity sold annually from 2010 onwards, increasing at a 0.5-percentage point rate per year from 2015 to 2024. The result? »Electricity suppliers are showing interest in several renewable energy projects,« states Burgos Galíndez. As to the project profitability, Burgos Galíndez is confident that the sale of carbon rights and access to special tax incentives make Calama Solar I a winner. Solarpack expects the project to become a milestone in the Chilean energy law as the first time a PPA will be signed for a period of 20 to 25 years. »This,« he says, »will break the current status where long-term agreements for energy are not allowed.« The MOE is currently promoting Calama as the country’s renewable energy production center. Over the next few years, solar and wind power facilities equal to 129 MW are expected to be connected to the SING network. As part of this drive, the MOE has made state-owned land available on a concessionary basis to Solarpack, as well as wind-power company SoWiTec. Calama Solar I will soon be joined by a 500 kW PV power station in San Pedro de Atacama, for which a tender is due to be published in the near future. In addition, in September, the MOE’s Tokman invited Spain’s Valencia Association for Energy Companies (AVAESEN) to submit proposals for PV and concentrated solar power plants for $88 million. Alejandro Diego Rosell © PHOTON International, December 2009 Duplicate only with allowance of PHOTON Europe GmbH, Aachen, Germany  back