Chile: An example when it comes to renewables
The South American country is considering becoming dependent only on renewable energy.
The Executive Secretary of the National Energy Commission (CNE) of Chile stated that their first goal is to reach 20% of renewable energy by 2025. The South American country has significant potential for switching over to renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind, and hydropower.
To reach that goal, and to create an incentive, Chile’s government recently started to implement solar panels on the rooftops of public and social interest buildings, such as the rooftop on the Museo de la Memoria in Santiago.
The Chilean Energy Department has announced that this system is the first to be completed with a price of $120,000 USD dollars which will help save 16% of the buildings energy by producing approximately 70kW. As well as around 7.700.000 Chilean pesos yearly.
This whole project is funded through a special program named “Public Solar Rooftops Program” (Programa de Techos Solares Públicos). Said functional solar panels have been installed on another 81 buildings and there are other 16 buildings waiting to be connected to the energy grid while 3 are currently being developed.
The scope of these projects is between 5 and 100 kWp per building making the overall capacity of 3MWp, comparable to other solar farms in Mexico. In 2017, the total registered installations have been of 355 which doubles that of 2016. This solar equipment has raised over 2MW of solar energy incrementing its total to 6.57 MW.
LatinAmerican post | Daniel Posada
Copy edited by Susana Cicchetto
