Chilean utility Engie Chile announced on Wednesday that it has started the assembly of a 68-MW/418-MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at a site situated next to its former diesel power station in the northern part of the South American country.
Dubbed Tamaya BESS, the energy transition project has been designed store electricity generated by Engie’s 114-MW Tamaya solar farm and feed it into the grid during peak demand hours.
The 114-MW Tamaya solar farm, located in Tocopilla province, northern Chile, has been in operation since February 2022.
The BESS facility will feature 152 containers packed with lithium-ion batteries and capable of providing more than five hours of storage. The solution will be integrated by China’s Sungrow Power Supply Co Ltd (SHE:300274), Engie Chile said.
The Tamaya BESS is Engie Chile’s third energy storage project in the country. It follows Coya BESS with a capacity 638 GWh, which is currently under construction and also part of a solar-plus-storage setup. The utility’s first BESS project was a system of 2 MWh in the Chilean region of Arica.
The latest initiative aligns with Engie Chile’s energy transformation plan, in which one of the objectives is to convert part of the land used by traditional power plants for renewable energy generation, the company said.
“These solutions are key to serving our decarbonisation plan, as BESS Tamaya will reduce emissions by 42,187 tonnes of CO2 per year, which is equivalent to taking approximately 14,500 conventional combustion vehicles off the road,” Engie Chile CEO Rosaline Corinthien stated.