Accelerating US$1.3bn Chile transmission project seen as risky move
The recent decision by Chile’s energy ministry to accelerate the development of the US$1.3bn Kimal-Lo Aguirre transmission line could lead to delays due to community opposition.
This was the key takeaway from a panel hosted by the local arm of Colombian transmission giant ISA, Interchile, where experts discussed the company’s project to bolster its existing Cardones-Polpaico line as an alternative to the 1,600km Kimal-Lo Aguirre project.
According to Humberto Verdejo, a professor at Universidad de Santiago, the trace study, which was canceled by the authorities this week to speed up works, is an essential part of any transmission project as it relates to community work along the territory affected by the line.
“With these measures, it can seem as if a short-term problem is being solved, but they could create a bigger problem in the long term,” Verdejo said, as communities have traditionally strongly opposed transmission lines on their surrounding territory.
Trace studies were introduced in 2016 as part of a regulatory overhaul. Their objective was to solve community problems related to the territories affected by transmission assets before the projects were tendered, avoiding delays faced by previous transmission projects, such as those related to the construction of failed hydroelectric generator Hidroaysén.
The flipside of these studies is that they can take a long time to complete, involving public meetings with several groups living alongside the line’s projected path. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, some aspects of the study have become impossible to conduct for the time being.
According to Verdejo, community opposition during the construction of Cardones-Polpaico, Chile’s most recent large-scale transmission project, was so impactful and sustained that once the line finally could start operations (more than a year later than expected), it was quickly reaching maximum capacity, instead of providing a comfortable overhead for the system for a while.
According to Gabriel Melguizo, CEO of ISA Interchile, a key component of building a successful infrastructure project is to assign risks to actors that are best equipped to deal with them. And the state is often more effective at establishing dialogue with communities than private companies.
“This means we wish the timetable [to complete the project] will be shorter, but according to our preliminary analysis, it is possible the timetable will not shorten and the [project’s] complexity will increase, because [the cancellation] allocates the risk to an actor that is not best equipped to handle this type of risk,” Melguizo said, namely, whichever company is awarded the project.
ISA Interchile recently submitted a different US$1.47bn transmission project for inclusion in Chile’s plans to expand its transmission infrastructure that would alleviate some of the problems caused by delays in the construction of Kimal-Lo Aguirre.
As BNamericas reported previously, the project would bolster the Los Changos-Lo Aguirre connection, a section of the company’s existing Cardones-Polpaico line, increasing its capacity and enabling it to operate partially as an HVDC line, which would result in lower power losses.
Since it uses existing transmission infrastructure and does not require new towers, the project could be built much more quickly and with less risk of community opposition and delays.
“This expansion we are proposing is the only project we know of that has been put on the table with serious studies and can, in a short span of time, between three and five years, add a higher capacity line to bring in the electrons that will be generated in the north,” Melguizo said, in reference to Chile’s sprawling northern renewables pipeline, primarily composed of photovoltaic projects.
However, according to Verdejo, while the project would help alleviate potential congestion problems in the short term, it is not a replacement for Kimal-Lo Aguirre, which addresses the same issues more robustly and in the medium term.
But both projects could work in conjunction, with the expansion of Cardones-Polpaico lessening the urgent need for Kimal-Lo Aguirre and allowing that line to advance with the permitting process and enter operation during the next decade.
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