Wind energy potential in Chile: Assessment of a small scale wind farm for residential clients

This work presents a techno-financial evaluation of two Chilean locations with promising wind potential: Laguna Verde placed in the central region of the country, and Porvenir in the southern region. A small scale wind farm was studied, considering a nominal electrical production capacity of 90 kW. This facility is comprised of three wind turbine models, all available in the national market. Currently, the tariff method used in Chile is the net billing scheme, where the energy bought and sold to the grid has different prices. The study is based on 300 hypothetical residential households. The software tool used to perform the assessment was the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER). For all the scenarios the results showed a Net Present Cost (NPC), instead of a financial profit from the proposed projects. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out. From the group of variables studied, the NPC exhibited itself as more sensitive to the price of buying energy from the grid and to the annual average wind speed. Finally, a few government policies and their applications are discussed.