Enel and Enap inaugurete Cerro Pabellon

Enel and ENAP inaugurated today Cerro Pabellón, which is the first geothermal power plant in South America and the world’s first large-scale facility of this kind to be built at 4,500 meters above sea level. The inauguration ceremony, which follows the start of operations at the second of the plant’s two 24 MW-units, was opened by Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet and attended by Chile’s Energy Minister Andrés Rebolledo, the country’s Environment Minister Marcelo Mena, Enel CEO and General Manager Francesco Starace, ENAP CEO Marcelo Tokman and Antonio Cammisecra, Head of Enel’s renewable division Enel Green Power.

“We are proud to inaugurate Cerro Pabellón, which is a milestone not only for us, but for all of South America and will help Chile to diversify its generation mix”, said Enel CEO Francesco Starace. "The construction of Cerro Pabellón represented a technical and human challenge that we have been able to successfully tackle thanks to the effort of a highly specialised team that worked in the midst of the beauty and harshness of the desert. We hope that this milestone will be for Chile the starting point of a new path in energy development to boost the growth of its geothermal sector which can leverage on a significant potential and resource availability."

Marcelo Tokman, CEO of ENAP said: "Today we close a chapter in the quest to use geothermal energy in Chile and we begin a new stage. An effort of almost a hundred years, including the first geothermal committee created by CORFO and ENAP five decades ago, and which illustrates precisely the role our company has today to articulate projects and solutions that promote a sustainable energy future"

During the ceremony the Environment Minister Marcelo Mena awarded Cerro Pabellón’s base camp with the Sello de Excelencia en la Gestión de Gases de Efecto Invernadero (Seal of Excellence for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Management) as part of the Ministry’s Huella Chile programme. This is the first time that a project in Chile receives this award which recognised the measures implemented at the base camp throughout the development of the project to quantify, reduce and neutralise the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Cerro Pabellón is located in the Atacama Desert, in the Ollagüe district, Antofagasta region, and is composed of two units with a gross installed capacity of 24 MW each for a total capacity of 48 MW. Once fully operational, it will be able to produce around 340 GWh per year, equivalent to the consumption needs of more than 165,000 Chilean households, while avoiding the annual emission of more than 166,000 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Cerro Pabellón is a high-enthalpy binary cycle plant and incorporates the most advanced geothermal technologies to guarantee an optimum performance against the extreme conditions of its location, characterised by high temperature variation and high altitude. In addition, the geothermal fluid extracted from the production wells, once completed the generation cycle into the plant, is re-injected into the reservoir ensuring the long-term availability and sustainability of the geothermal resource. One of the particular characteristics of geothermal energy is its ability to produce energy continuously, 24 hours a day.

The facility, whose construction required an investment of around 320 million US dollars, is owned by Geotérmica del Norte S.A. ("GDN"), a joint venture controlled by Enel’s Chilean renewable subsidiary Enel Green Power Chile (83.65%) and participated by ENAP (16.35%). The first 24 MW unit started to deliver energy to the Norte Grande transmission system (SING, Sistema Interconectado del Norte Grande) at the end of March, while the second unit will be fully operational in October.