The President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, together with his entourage and a delegation of businessmen from the energy sector, will visit the Chinese Concentrated Solar Power plant with the highest production in the world, according to H2 News.
President Boric, accompanied by representatives of Cosin Solar, an international company that is part of the Asociación Concentración Solar de Potencia Chile (ACSP), will visit the first large-scale commercial molten salt tower in Delingha, the city where the company, then named Supcon Solar built the plant, which has been in full production since 2018. This plant’s power generation has exceeded designed generation (of 146 GWh annually), by exceeding more than 100% of the target each year, and thus setting the highest operating record among molten salt tower CSP plants worldwide.
This visit should help allay some of the concerns holding back CSP development in Chile as a result of the issues that caused some years of initial delays at Abengoa’s Cerro Dominado. The tower CSP project finally synchronized to the grid in 2021, managed by then by Cerro Dominador Group/EIG Global Energy Partners, which launched as Grupo Cerro in 2022. However, no further CSP bids have been awarded in Chile’s open-to-all-sources auctions, despite record-low prices. No renewables get any incentives.
