When Chilean president Sebastián Piñera was inaugurated for a second time in March this year, he inherited a very different energy sector to the one that existed when he left office in 2014.
Wholesale power prices have fallen more than 20% due to aggressive tender bids by solar and wind projects; PV installations in the northern Atacama region have proved to have among the highest efficiencies in the world; wind power is developing as fast as PV did a few years ago; large hydro projects are now being blocked by indigenous and local pressure groups; and blackouts have become a thing of the past as Chile’s grids are no longer so reliant on the unreliable supply of natural gas from...
