Why is Chile putting a hydropower plant in the middle of the world’s most arid desert?

Chile is building a $400-million hydroelectric power plant in the Atacama Desert — considered the world’s driest area of land. 

While this might seem like a bit of a head scratcher, it’s actually an incredibly well thought out plan that should end up generating a ton of green energy for the South American country.

The reason why the Atacama Desert is being targeted is due to its geography. You see, there are mountains near the sea here, and so the country figures that by setting up a hydropower plant it will be able to generate limitless green energy on a more consistent and reliable basis than sun or wind. 

Taking a look at the technological how-to for this project, Chilean energy company Valhalla will use solar power to pump water from the Pacific Ocean into two reservoirs located high in the Andes Mountains. When these reservoirs are full — which, it should be noted, can each hold as much water as about 22,000 Olympic swimming pools — they will release the water back down into a hydroelectric plant with a capacity of 300 megawatts.

That’s enough to power three provinces in Chile. 

“This is the only place in the world where a project of this kind can be developed,” said Francisco Torrealba, the company's strategy manager. “The technology has been super well tested around the world. It's this particular combination that has never been tried.”

Valhalla recently received approval to move forward with the project from environmental authorities. Now, they are seeking investors, a process they hope to have wrapped up within the next year so they can officially break ground for construction.

Estimated timeline for this project is set to three and a half years.

Worth noting — Valhalla is studying three other areas with similar geographical characteristics for additional hydropower plant stations.

Via phys.org