Assessment of on-site steady electricity generation from renewable energy sources in Chile

Chile has an immense renewable energy potential but their integration in the energy system constitutes a major challenge. The complex topography of the country, the isolation of the different electric grids and the variability of renewable energy sources, makes energy transmission from locations with high variable renewable power generation potential to the demand centres not an easy task. The present study aims at assessing the potential of combining solar power, wind power and storage systems to provide steady loads already from the source. Such a combination should take advantage of complementarity between variable renewable sources and serves to simplify their integration in the energy system. The analysis relies on an optimization model to size hybrid renewable energy systems and 10 years of weather data from the brand new ERA-5 reanalysis. Necessary system sizes to constantly generate 1 MWh of electricity for every hour during the period 2008-2017 are calculated for all possible locations across the country. The results show that the necessary generation and storage capacities to provide a steady energy output are very high even for areas with exceptionally high renewable energy potential.