Italian energy company Enel and Empresa Nacional del Petróleo (ENP) have inaugurated the 48MW Cerro Pabellón geothermal power plant located in Chile.
The Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant is owned by Geotérmica del Norte (GDN), which is a joint venture between Enel Green Power Chile (83.65%) and ENAP (16.35%).
Cerro Pabellón is located 4500m above sea level in Chile’s Atacama Desert, in the Ollagüe district, Antofagasta region. It includes two units with an installed capacity of 24MW each.
The geothermal plant is capable of producing around 340GWh of power per year, which is equivalent to the energy needs of more than 165,000 households in the country. It also helps in avoiding about 166,000 tons of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
Enel CEO Francesco Starace said: “We are proud to inaugurate Cerro Pabellón, which is a milestone not only for us, but for all of South America and will help Chile to diversify its generation mix.
“The construction of Cerro Pabellón represented a technical and human challenge that we have been able to successfully tackle thanks to the effort of a highly specialised team that worked in the midst of the beauty and harshness of the desert."
Enel claims that the geothermal plant is a high-enthalpy binary cycle plant and is equipped with advanced geothermal technologies.
Enel also says that the geothermal fluid extracted from the production wells is pumped back into the system once the power generation is completed. This practice, as per the company, ensures long term availability and sustainability of the geothermal resource.
ENAP CEO Marcelo Tokman said: “Today we close a chapter in the quest to use geothermal energy in Chile and we begin a new stage.
“An effort of almost a hundred years, including the first geothermal committee created by CORFO and ENAP five decades ago, and which illustrates precisely the role our company has today to articulate projects and solutions that promote a sustainable energy future.”