Ordinary
Citizens Help Drive Spread of Solar Power in Chile
1. SANTIAGO, Jan 14 2017 (IPS) - Chile, Latin
America’s leader in solar energy, is starting the new year with an innovative
step: the development of the country´s first citizens solar power plant.
This South American country of
nearly 18 million people has projects in non-conventional renewable energies
(NCRE) for a combined total of nine billion dollars over the next four years,
in the effort to reduce its heavy dependency on fossil fuels, which still
generate more than 55 per cent of the country’s electricity.
Socialist
President Michelle Bachelet’s 2014 Energy Agenda involves the participation of
international investors, large power companies, the mining industry,
agriculture, and academia.
Now
ecologists have come up with the first project that incorporates citizens in
the production and profits generated by NCRE, in particular solar power.
The
small 10-KW photovoltaic plant will use solar power to generate electricity for
the participating households and the surplus will go into the national power
grid.
4. This
will allow the “citizen shareholders“ taking part in the initiative to receive
profits based on the annual inflation rate plus an additional two per cent.
“The objective is to create a way for
citizens to participate in the benefits of solar power and the process of the
democratisation of energy,“ said Manuel Baquedano, head of the Institute of Political Ecology, which is behind the
initiative.
The Buin 1 Solar Plant will start operating
commercially this month in Buin, a suburb on the south side of Santiago. Its
main client is the Centre for Sustainable Technology, which from now on will be
supplied with the power produced by the plant.
“In Chile we have experienced an important
development of solar energy, as a consequence of the pressure from citizens who
did not want more hydroelectric dams. This paved the way for developing NCREs,“
Baquedano told IPS.
8. “But
solar power development has been concentrated in major undertakings, with solar
plants that mainly supply the mining industry. And the possibility for all
citizens to be able to benefit from this direct energy source had not been
addressed yet.”
The environmentalist said “we decided to
organise a business model to install these community solar power plants using
citizen investments, since there was no support from the state or from private
companies.”
The model consists of setting up a plant
where there is a client who is willing to buy 75 per cent of the energy
produced, and the remaining power is sold to the national grid.
The Buin 1 Solar Plant required an
investment of about 18,500 dollars, divided in 240 shares of some 77 dollars
each. The project will be followed by similar initiatives, possibly in San
Pedro de Atacama, in the north of the country, Curicó in central Chile, or
Coyhaique in Patagonia in the south.
The
partners include engineers, journalists, psychologists, farmers, small business
owners, and even indigenous communities from different municipalities,
interested in replicating this model.
A symbolic illustration of progress made with solar power is the Santiago Metro
or subway. It was announced that 42 per cent of the energy that it will use as
of November 2017 will come from the El Pelicano solar power project.
This
plant, owned by the company SunPower, is located in the municipality La
Higuera, 400 km north of Santiago, and it cost 250 million dollars to build.
“The
subway is a clean means of transport… we want to be a sustainable company, and
what is happening now is a major step, since we are aiming for 60 per cent
NCREs by 2018,” said Fernando Rivas, the company´s assistant manager of
environment.
El Pelícano, with an expected generation of 100 MW, “will use 254,000 solar
panels, which will supply 300 gigawatt hours a year, equivalent to the
consumption of 125,000 Chilean households,” said Manuel Tagle, general manager
of SunPower.
Dionisio Antiquera, a farmer from the
Diaguita indigenous community from northern Chile, who lives in Cerrillos de
Tamaya, in Ovalle, 400 km north of Santiago, bought a share because “I like renewable
energy and because it gives participation to citizens, to the poor.“
“There
are many ways of participating in a cooperative,” he told IPS by phone.
Jimena Jara, assistant secretary for the
Ministry of Energy, underlined the progress made in the development of NCREs
and estimated that “investment in this sector could reach about nine billion
dollars between 2017 and 2020.“
“Considering the projects that are currently
in the stage of testing in our power grids, more than 60 per cent of the new
generation capacity between 2014 and the end of 2016 will be non-conventional
renewable energies,” she told IPS.
”Chile has set itself the target for 70 per
cent of power generation to come from renewable sources by 2050, and 60 per
cent by 2035. We know that we are making good progress, and that we are going
to reach our goal with an environmentally sustainable and economically
efficient energy supply,” said Jara.
This boom in NCREs in Chile, particularly
solar and wind power, is underpinned by numbers, such as the reduction of the
cost of electricity.
As
of November 2016, the annual average marginal cost of energy in Chile´s central
power grid, SIC, which covers a large part of the national territory, was 61
dollars per mega-watt hour (MWh), a fall of more than 60 per cent with respect
to 2013 prices.
SIC´s Power Dispatch Center said that this
marginal cost, which sets the transfer value between generating companies, is
the lowest in 10 years, and was lower than the 91.3 dollars per MWh in 2015 and
the nearly 200 MWh in 2011 and 2012, caused by the intensive use of diesel.
David
Watts, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Electrical
Engineering Department, told IPS that
“solar and wind energy have offered competitive costs for quite some time,” and
for this reason have permanently changed Chile´s energy mix.
“In the past, Chile did not even appear in
the renewable energy rankings. Now it ranks first in solar power in Latin
America and second in wind power,” he said.
The expert said “this energy is spreading
and we expect it to continue to do so over the next couple of years, when the
battery of projects that were awarded contracts in the last tendering process
of regulated clients,” those which consume less than 500 KW, come onstream.
Once the economy recovers from the current
weak growth levels, “we hope that a significant proportion of our supply
contracts with our non-regulated clients (with a connected power of at least
500 KW) will also be carried out with competitive solar and wind power
projects,“ said Watts.
“There is no turning back from this change.
From now on, some conventional project may occasionally be installed if its
costs are really competitive,“ he said.
Watts, who is also a consultant on renewable
energies at the Ministry of Energy, pointed out that the growth in solar and
wind power was also driven by changes in the country’s legislation, which
enabled energy to be offered in blocks, and permitted the simultaneous
connection of NCREs to the grid.
The report New Energy Finance Climatescope,
by Bloomberg and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), ranked Chile as the
country that invests the most in clean energies in Latin America, only
surpassed by China in the index, which studies the world’s major emerging
economies.
Commenting
on the report, published on December 14, Bachelet said “we invested 3.2 billion
dollars last year (2015), focusing on solar power, especially in solar
photovoltaic installations, and we are also leading in other non-conventional
renewable energies.”
“We said it three years ago, that Chile
would change its energy mix, and now I say with pride that we have made
progress towards cleaner and more sustainable energies,“ she said.
My Comments:
Sarawak is situated
at Equator. I wonder why this BN-PBB led
government has never cared to develop solar power. This time, Miri, Limbang and Baram areas are
heavily flooded. Tell me that the
damned dams do not play a part in floods.
In the Baram area,
it was reported that there 5,000 plus people were affected by floods. If
this is not true, just let me know, please.
You may shout at me. Prove me
wrong if it is not because of poor drainage system and the fast discharge of
water from the dams. How many more
times do you people need to face devastating floods to wake up to do something
before you get help or may not until n years later? It is time local people to work out gotong-royong way to dig wells
with the demand of the funding from the representatives, be they Sarawak or so
called National representatives for allocation funds for the immediate actions
to fight floods. I bet that the flood
will become worse and worse each time.
