In Chile, battery storage is being paired directly with wind and solar farms primarily to manage grid bottlenecks and prevent the waste of clean energy. According to the authors of the newly released report, over 80% of the country’s battery projects are built on the same sites as renewable plants because the power lines required to transport electricity to population centers are not being expanded fast enough.
“Built primarily to address rising curtailment and ease transmission bottlenecks, these BESS projects store excess renewable generation that cannot be immediately delivered to demand centers,” the report states. It further explains that the high degree of this pairing “signals that the pace of transmission infrastructure development lags behind the rapid expansion of renewable generation in Chile.”
In simpler terms, Chile’s remote wind and solar farms are often producing more electricity than the national power grid can actually carry. To prevent this clean energy from being thrown away, developers are installing large-scale batteries on-site to act as a temporary holding tank. These systems capture surplus power during peak production times and release it later when it can be safely sent across the wires, bypassing the physical limitations of the current infrastructure.
The report “Energy Storage Signals Shift to Renewable Grids” was published in March 2026 by the Global Energy Monitor. Prepared by lead author Ye Huang, the briefing analyzes the rapid global expansion of battery storage systems and their essential role in integrating variable wind and solar power into modern electricity grids.
