Weekly Market Analytics Chile Vol 11 Num 33

VOL 11 | NUM 33 | 7 March 2025

Power Markets Weekly

CHILE | 24 February - 2 March 2025

Power Markets Weekly is a brief weekly review of the electric market operation in Chile, Mexico, Iberia, France and Italy. If you are not a subscriber, please feel free to subscribe here

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Blackout leaves 99% of Chile in the dark, pushing prices up and showing the importance of a resilient and flexible system.

Global SEN operation

The average price in Polpaico was USD 118.3/MWh, 103% higher than last week and 153% higher compared to one year ago.

Marginal cost evolution in Polpaico during past years

Due to the blackout, demand dropped to 1.47 TWh, 13% lower than last week.

This week gas and dam starred in terms of participation: the first one had an increase of 2.9 pp and the second one rose up by 5.5 pp. Both increases were due to the reliance on those technologies in the days and hours following the system recovery.

On the other hand, coal, solar, and wind took big losses in their participation: solar went down by 3.7 pp, wind decreased by 1.3 pp, and coal by 3.4 pp. Solar and wind decreases were partly due to stronger transmission limitations after the recovery, while coal reduction was due to the fact coal units took around a day to inject again after the recovery.

Generation Mix

Variation

Power range by energy sources (average prices)

Generation evolution

Geothermal

Cogeneration

Biomass

Coal

Gas

Oil

BESS

Dam

Run-of-river

Wind

PV Solar

CSP

This week the main event was the blackout on Tuesday. At 15:15, a failure in the 500 kV line Nueva Maitencillo - Nueva Pan de Azúcar took the whole system down, leaving 98.9% of Chile without electricity. Once that failure was solved, according to the ISO, failures in Transelec SCADA rendered a fast reconnection impossible.

The whole system was back again after more than 10 hours and many efforts, although it took until Thursday to resume usual demand levels. Dam amd gas plants played a key role in the recovery of the SEN.

From Friday onward, the CEN started limiting the power flow through the lines that caused the blackout.This limitation caused curtailment to increase without droping prices to zero, thus resulting in higher solar prices overall.

The event rose the prices to a maximum of USD 704.6 MWh (shortage price).

Marginal cost evolution

Crucero
USD 139.9/MWh

D. de Almagro
USD 107.3/MWh

Pan de Azúcar
USD 117.0/MWh

Polpaico
USD 118.3/MWh

Charrúa
USD 116.4/MWh

Puerto Montt
USD 174.1/MWh

Solar and Wind production & BESS dispatch

Solar generation went down with a total of 339.6 GWh, 25% lower than last week. The average plant factor was 18.6%, being the highest in Charrúa (25.1%) and lowest in Puerto Montt (14.1%).

Wind generation also decreased with a total of 156.4 GWh, 23% lower than last week. The average plant factor was 17.1%, being the highest in Charrúa (21.9%) and the lowest in Polpaico (4.1%).

BESS discharged a total of 20.3 GWh, 22% lower than last week. The average plant factor was 11.5%, being the highest in Diego de Almagro (16.4%) and the lowest in Pan de Azúcar (5.1%)

This week’s curtailment rate was 14.9% for wind and 19.8% for solar, reaching an average curtailment rate of 18.4%, meaning that 131.2 GWh of renewable energy were lost due to the curtailment. These values are computed from reductions available in CEN's daily summaries.