KKR-backed independent power producer ContourGlobal has broken ground on its fourth utility-scale solar photovoltaic and battery storage hybrid project in Chile, a 240 MW solar facility paired with 110 MW / 550 MWh of battery storage dubbed “Sun at Night” that will deliver firm renewable capacity into the country’s northern grid. The project marks a deliberate scaling of solar-plus-storage as a baseload-equivalent resource in one of the world’s highest-irradiance markets, where storage is increasingly turning daytime solar generation into dispatchable nighttime power.
Chile’s energy transition has entered a critical phase: the country aims to retire its coal fleet by 2040 while electricity demand grows, particularly from mining operations in the Atacama region. Solar resources there are among the strongest globally, but without storage they cannot meet evening peaks or provide the grid stability services once supplied by thermal plants. ContourGlobal’s repeated investment — this is its fourth hybrid in Chile since 2021 — signals that the economics of co-located solar and batteries have crossed a threshold where they compete directly with gas-fired peaking capacity on a levelized cost of storage basis.
The “Sun at Night” branding reflects a business model shift across the IPP landscape. Rather than selling intermittent energy into a merchant market increasingly saturated at midday, developers are packaging solar with enough storage duration — five hours in this case — to bid firm capacity into Chile’s evolving capacity remuneration mechanisms and bilateral offtake agreements with corporate buyers seeking 24/7 renewable supply. KKR’s infrastructure platform has positioned ContourGlobal to execute this strategy at scale, leveraging lower cost of capital to underwrite storage assets that merchant developers might struggle to finance.
Chile is effectively serving as a global proving ground for the solar-plus-storage hybrid model. Its combination of world-class irradiance, a liberalized power market, and a clear policy signal on decarbonization has attracted a concentration of hybrid projects unmatched elsewhere in Latin America. What works here — contract structures, grid integration protocols, battery degradation management in high-cycling applications — will inform deployment in markets from Texas to Australia as they confront the same challenge: turning abundant but variable solar into a reliable, dispatchable resource that can displace fossil generation not just at the margin, but at the core of the power system.
Read the full report at Energy Storage News.