After a long process of deliberation and approval by different governmental bodies, Chile finally enacted the Storage and Electromobility Law.
The regulation will promote the participation of renewable energies in the electricity matrix, which will allow their storage and avoid the dumping of the generated production.
It will also enable pure storage projects, i.e., those systems that are not associated with generation plants, to be paid for injecting energy into the electric system and for being available at times of high demand.
According to the Ministry of Energy, the legislation will also allow the acceleration of the retirement of coal-fired power plants, in order to provide greater security to the electricity infrastructure and advance in the decarbonization process.
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National Energy Strategy
The enactment of the law contemplates fundamental aspects that seek to increase the participation of renewable energies in the national electricity matrix, promoting technologies for their storage and not discarding the energy that is produced.
At the same time, it promotes electromobility through incentives and enables electric vehicles to participate in the distribution network as storage equipment, allowing new applications and associated services.
For the solar energy sector, it allows the use of batteries to be regulated, which will make it possible to store the energy generated during sunlight hours, so that it can be marketed at night, when demand is higher.
It will also make it possible to provide 24-hour continuity to the solar parks. Likewise, the regulated use of batteries will allow these installations to avoid the famous spills, as they will not have to dispose of the stored sources when the transmission grids present any kind of inconvenience.
A Historic Step
The Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojas, pointed out that the enactment of this law is very good news and a fundamental piece in fulfilling the commitment for Chile to be a carbon neutral society by 2050.
“Promoting storage technologies allows the participation of renewable energies to continue to increase and, in addition, promotes benefits that facilitate electromobility”, she added.
For his part, the Minister of Energy, Diego Pardow said that “the first time of public policies for the promotion of renewable energies was the one that culminates with the milestone that represents that the generation capacity with variable energies surpasses coal in the aggregate”.
He stressed that now a second time is beginning that will allow the development of flexible renewable energies. “What does this mean? Incentivizing the use of clean technologies that allow the system to respond during peak demand,” and thus “stop depending on fossil fuels. That is the only way to decarbonize our energy matrix,” he explained.
