Enel and ENAP inaugurated 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, a release reveals.

“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.”

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.