Geothermal energy in electricity markets and decarbonisation scenarios: The Chilean case

Abstract

Nowadays geothermal projects must face a challenging competition from variable renewable generation projects, such as PV and wind power plants, almost all over the world, and usually their biding offers cannot compete with traditional or alternative renewable energies. The efforts of this paper aim towards finding new approaches to assess geothermal energy in order to properly consider their unique technology advantages as well as a longer term for assessing the availability of this technology to strengthen the power systems. The technical feasibility of installing a geothermal-power plant is highly dependent on the availability of an adequate geothermal resource and energy market competitiveness against other technologies. In this work, the geothermal energy role is evaluated in order to achieve the decarbonisation of the Chilean Energy Matrix in different scenarios, including the complementary use of geothermal and CSP units.