How to take better advantage of Chile's wealth of solar energy? The country has one of the highest rates of solar irradiation per square meter in the world, which has resulted in a growing number of electricity generation projects using photovoltaic panels, both in large-scale installations and medium-sized systems. Distributed generation -smaller installations for local connection or self-consumption- have not grown at the same pace, partly due to regulatory issues or traceability of the energy generated.

This handicap has been seen as an opportunity by the Energy Transition Center of the Adolfo Ibáñez University (Centra) and the Chilean Solar Energy Association (Acesol), which have joined forces to develop an applied research project aimed at the integration of energy resources. 

The project seeks to develop a platform and computational tools to emulate the behavior of the electric grid and facilitate the efficient location of resources such as batteries, solar roofs and electric vehicle charging stations, for example.

With this, the promoters of the initiative seek to influence public policies and unblock investments in distributed generation, creating regulatory changes to promote it.

Evolution of distributed generation in Chile (self-consumption, in kWp)

Source: CNE, Flux Solar