Sep 11, 2020
The initiative, located in the Putaendo district, produces 100% of the energy required for the Mataquito-Hortifrut farms.
Its capacity is equal to the monthly power consumption of 116 homes and its CO2 reduction is equal to the annual average route of 56 combustion engine vehicles or the capture by 3.3 hectares of forest.
An island with 456 photovoltaic panels makes up the largest floating solar power plant in Chile, connected to the distribution network in compliance with the net billing law. This distributed generation initiative was launched this morning by the Minister of Energy, Mr. Juan Carlos Jobet, together with Claudio Rodriguez, Governor of San Felipe province; Sergio Zamora, Mayor of Putaendo, and Fernanda Pinochet, Energy Regional Ministerial Secretary (Seremi), Valparaiso region.
The project, developed by the Chilean company Solarity, is placed over 1,500 m2 of the Mataquito-Hortifrut farm reservoir, and supplies 100% of its energy requirements.
The Minister of Energy, Juan Carlos Jobet, explained that “this plant not only supplies renewable electricity at a very low cost to this blueberry farm, but also prevents water evaporation in the reservoir, which is very important during these drought times. We are strongly promoting distributed generation, and we have already reached the goal we had set ourselves to quadruple the installed capacity of this technology, which allows to use renewable energy without requiring transmission infrastructure, therefore we are very happy to open it.”
He also noted that “today we have managed to quadruple our capacity, reaching 64 MW, which is equal to the annual consumption of 51 thousand homes. That is equal to the consumption of districts such as Estacion Central or Talcahuano. As for the installed power, it is enough to light 4.5 million 14W LED light bulbs. But it also contributes to the environment by moving 50 thousand tonnes of CO2 a year.”
