During a keynote speech at the 4th Latin America Energy Storage Summit, Ana Lía Rojas, Executive Director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Energy Storage (ACERA), revealed that as of August 2025, the curtailed energy from solar and wind sources in Chile had reached 3.2 TWh.
As shown in the figure below, this figure shows a slight increase compared to the same period last year, though the growth rate has slowed compared to the surge in curtailment between 2023 and 2024. In 2024, curtailed solar and wind energy in Chile approached 6 TWh, a sharp increase of 133% from the previous year.
Rojas further pointed out that although the Chilean grid added 2.2 TWh of new solar PV generation last year, solar curtailment simultaneously increased by 2.7 TWh, highlighting deep-seated systemic absorption challenges.
Despite these curtailment difficulties, Chile’s renewable energy development prospects remain broad. Currently, 30.2 GW of renewable energy projects have received environmental approval nationwide, including 19.9 GW of solar PV projects and 2.9 GW of energy storage projects. Rojas added that a further 22 GW of projects are awaiting environmental approval, including 6.8 GW of standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.
Rojas emphasized that “growth in electricity demand is a key element for Chile’s energy transition.” Otherwise, the country’s energy structure could revert to past patterns, encountering the same type of development bottlenecks that have hindered technological expansion in recent years.
She further warned that if demand growth remains weak, the grid would face “a comprehensive erosion of the market”—an impact that would not only affect the renewable sector internally but also spread across all energy types and market segments, from utility-scale to distributed generation (PMGD) projects.
“We urgently need policy direction promoting comprehensive electrification, and we must act immediately,” Rojas concluded.
