Abengoa Solar won the international bidding contest for the contract to build Solar Cerro Dominador, which will be Latin America’s largest CSP facility. This tower solar plant will supply electricity to CDEC-SING, the grid operator for Chile’s Norte Grande region.

Abengoa is today the leader in the CSP industry, given its high level of experience designing and building solar thermal plants in Spain, the US, South Africa, the UAE, Mexico, India and Algeria, among other important markets.

This is Abengoa Solar’s third project in Latin America, but it is much larger than the previous projects in Mexico and Chile which also used different technology (parabolic trough). Mexico’s Agua Prieta plant is a hybrid facility, while Chile’s Minera el Tesoro plant produces vapor instead of electricity for use in industry and mining.

Chile’s new CSP plant will cost an estimated $1 billion and have installed capacity of 110 MW. Thanks to the use of molten salts it will also have 17.5 hours of thermal storage. The plant will be located near the city of María Elena in the Antofagasta region, in the north of the country. Construction is expected to begin in the second half of 2014.

This new plant is part of Chile’s National Energy Strategy 2012-2030, which includes investment in renewable energy as one of its main pillars. This will take advantage of northern Chile’s abundant levels of sunlight.

Northern Chile has more sunlight than anywhere else in the world, with clear skies during most of the year. Spain’s Abengoa will take advantage of this renewable resource with its new solar plant.