The financing will be used towards the deployment of 269MW solar PV generation capacity and 1.1GWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS), at Gabriela, the fourth phase of Grenergy’s Oasis de Atacama project in northern Chile.

In October, CATL was announced as BESS supplier to Gabriela. The Chinese battery manufacturer will provide more than 220 of its EnerX BESS containers, featuring over 7,100 lithium iron phosphate (LFP) lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery modules. Rival Chinese manufacturer BYD is supplying equipment for previous phases.

Oasis de Atacama: 2GW of solar PV, 11GWh of battery storage

Set to be built in seven phases in total, the Oasis de Atacama complex will comprise 2GW of solar PV and 11GWh of battery storage in total, presuming the entire project proceeds as planned. This has led the IPP to claim the project will feature the world’s largest BESS installation when completed. It had originally been planned with 1GW PV and 4.1GWh of battery storage but Grenergy took a recent decision to up its scale dramatically.

The first three phases comprise a cumulative 451MW PV and 2.5GWh of battery storage, which already places Oasis de Atacama among the biggest projects of its type in the world.

Named Quillagua 1, Quillagua 2 and Víctor Jara, Phases 1 through 3 are currently under construction. In December, as reported by our colleagues at PV Tech, the trio was sold to investment firm KKR’s subsidiary ContourGlobal, with Grenergy retaining equity ownership of the balance of the project.

The five banks providing project financing for Phase 4 also financed the first three, with Bank of America, BBVA and Bank of China also involved in the financing of Quillagua 1, the first phase.

With US$354 million in financing for Phases 1 and 2, US$299 million for Phase 3 and now the latest transaction, Grenergy has raised just under a billion dollars (US$967 million) for Oasis de Atacama to date, the company noted.

In addition, the sale of 23% of the project to ContourGlobal is worth up to US$962 million. Grenergy said this not only generated significant cash flow for the IPP but also helps prove the viability of its business model of combining solar PV and BESS. The company claimed financing for the remainder of the project has also already been secured, although details are yet to be publicly announced.

“Chile is a key market for Grenergy. We have chosen this country to develop the world’s largest battery project,” CEO and executive chairman David Ruiz de Andrés said, adding that the company hoped to “continue growing this successful model in Chile and replicate it in other markets in Latin America, Europe, and the United States in the coming years.”

According to previous announcements from the IPP, the first phase of the project is due for grid connection in the coming weeks, while the next three will go into operation during 2025 and 2026.

Battery storage vital to success of solar in Chile

Both Energy-Storage.news and PV Tech have reported on numerous large-scale projects—solar-plus-storage and standalone battery storage—in Chile that have propelled the country to be leader in the Latin American region for BESS development.

Attendees at the Energy Storage Summit Latin America hosted by our publisher Solar Media in October last year heard that with solar PV in Chile—one of the sunniest countries in the world, particularly in the Atacama Desert region—at risk of rampant curtailment, the addition of batteries is being seen as a necessary mitigation of that risk.

According to Ana Lía Rojas, executive director at the Chilean renewable energy and energy storage association (ACERA), solar curtailment during 2024 could hit as much as 5TWh, enough to fully charge 3.4GW of 4-hour duration battery storage (13.6GWh).

In a feature article for the most recent edition of Solar Media’s quarterly journal, PV Tech Power (Vol.41), PV Tech section editor Jonathan Touriño Jacobo took a deep dive into the close relationship between the two technologies in Chile’s renewable energy sector.

“Technically speaking, the curtailment is an excess of renewable energy, and it’s an excess because of transmission restrictions,” Juan Pablo Toledo, country manager for Chile at METLEN Energy & Metals told PV Tech Power.

“Since the transmission lines are not capable of receiving all of the energy, mainly coming from solar, curtailment needs to be applied on the whole system.”

There are other significant drivers for the adoption of battery storage in the country. One of those is energy demand from Chile’s mining industry, which Alejandro McDonough, regional sales manager at Wärtsilä Energy Storage and Optimisation (Wärtsilä ES&O) noted represents about 60% of national energy consumption and represents facilities that in many cases need to run 24/7.

However, interviewees tended towards a consensus that, in common with other markets across Latin America and the Caribbean, there is a lack of regulatory certainty and legal frameworks that govern how batteries can operate in Chile’s energy and power markets.

For instance, ancillary services market opportunities for BESS are not established. These could not only increase revenues available for developers, investors and IPPs, but also decrease the overall cost of operating Chile’s energy system as well as aiding decarbonisation.