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Chile needs to increase its installed electric capacity to support economic growth. Currently, the total demand is 67,564 GW h and an additional 22,508 GW h will be needed by 2020 to meet the energy demand of industrial projects. The Chilean mining industry is a major electricity consumer in the country accounting for one third total consumption over today. Solar energy has the highest potential for growth in northern Chile as the north of the country hosts the highest solar resources of the world. In this paper we present a comprehensive review of the energy supply and demand status, planning and prospects in the country with focus on solar photovoltaic- and solar thermal-projects. As of the end of 2014, a solar capacity of 2384 MW are operational and under construction, and more than 10,000 MW of solar power plants have been proposed; most solar projects are located in northern regions where the mining takes place. Considering a conservative scenario where one half of the proposed solar projects would be operational before 2020, solar technology could cover a great part of the country’s energy requirements. We evaluated eight operating PV plants and three operating solar thermoelectric plants based on a multi-criteria assessment to offer a reference point for assessing future projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Chile has one of the best worldwide conditions for the generation of electrical energy from solar resources, having an annual average Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) of 9–10kWh/m2/day. Many important astronomical observatories have been installed in the north of Chile because of the low number of cloudy days and the high sky clearness index. Also, in the north of Chile, there are many mining companies who demand large amounts of load for their operation. They currently use electricity provided from fossil fuels thermoelectric plants (99% of the electrical generation of the Northern Interconnected Power System is thermoelectric) that are subject to fuel-price volatilities and have large global and local impacts on the environment. The work reported in this paper focuses on identifying a limited number of variables, which explain the variations on the investment cost of solar power plants, and use this information to assess the economic benefits of the installation of this type of plants in the north of Chile. In particular, multiple linear regressions were formulated, with information about 45 thermal and 37 photovoltaic existing and projected solar plants, to explain the variations among the investment cost of the different projects. We determine a limited number of variables that adequately explain the variations of the investment cost of solar energy power plants. Using these results, 11 technologies were simulated in four locations to assess the economic impact of these projects in terms of the change induced in the marginal cost of the system and the net present value of the 44 projects. We show that installing a solar power plant in the north of Chile will not bring net economic benefits for the power sector unless current conditions on factors such as carbon bond prices, labor rate, or solar-plant part prices change. The break even capital cost and energy cost for a Stirling Dish solar plant in Calama are 2.33 millions of USD/MW and 9.3 cents/kWh, respectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]