Analysis of Village Hybrid Systems in Chile

Chile recently began a major rural electrification program to electrify those 240,000 families (about half of the rural people) who lack electricity access. In this report, we discuss a pilot project to electrify three remote villages in Chile's Region IX using wind/genset/battery hybrids. The intent of this project is to demonstrate the reliability and cost-effectivess of wind/genset/batteryhybrids and to encourage replication of these types of systems in Chile's electrification program. For each village, electricity connections are planned for several residences, and also schools, health posts, community centers, or chapels. Projected average daily loads are small, ranging from 4 to 10 kWh. Using the optimization program HOMER and the simulation program Hybrid2, we evaluatedoptions to maximize technical performance, minimize costs, and gain experience with a variety of systems and components. We find that wind/genset/battery hybrids will be able to provide cost-effective, reliable power for these sites. More importantly , their inherent flexibility allows for variations in load and resource without greatly affecting the cost of energy.