Skip to main content

Santiago Metro to run on solar energy

Total and its affiliate, solar energy technology company SunPower have signed an agreement with the Metro of Santiago, Chile, for the supply of 300 gigawatt hours per year of clean solar energy. They say that the agreement makes the metro, which carries 2.2 million passengers a day, the first public transportation system in the world to run mostly on solar energy. According to Eduardo Medina, executive vice president, global power plants, SunPower, solar power is an ideal energy source for Chile because
May 25, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Total and its affiliate, solar energy technology company SunPower have signed an agreement with the Metro of Santiago, Chile, for the supply of 300 gigawatt hours per year of clean solar energy. They say that the agreement makes the metro, which carries 2.2 million passengers a day, the first public transportation system in the world to run mostly on solar energy.

According to Eduardo Medina, executive vice president, global power plants, SunPower, solar power is an ideal energy source for Chile because of the country's high solar resource and transparent energy policies.

SunPower will build the El Pelícano Solar Project, a 100-megawatt (AC) project near the municipalities of La Higuera (Coquimbo Region) and Vallenar (Atacama Region) and provide operations and maintenance once it is operational. Construction of the solar power plant will begin this year, with expected operation by the end of 2017.

"We are proud to partner with Metro in developing a new way of powering public transportation systems through competitive, reliable and clean energy," says Bernard Clément, senior vice president of Business & Operations of the New Energies division of Total.

Related Content

  • April 26, 2016
    Dubai launches autonomous vehicle strategy
    Dubai has taken a major step towards autonomous vehicles with the launch of its Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy, which aims to transform 25 per cent of the total transportation in Dubai to autonomous mode by 2030. The Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy is expected to save US$6 billion in annual economic revenues by reducing transportation costs, carbon emissions and accidents, and raising the productivity of individuals as well as saving hundreds of millions of hours wasted in conventional tr
  • September 11, 2020
    Uber clean-up - those all-important facts and figures
    Ride-hailing giant says it can switch to all-electric vehicles 'in any major city' by 2030
  • May 29, 2013
    Redflex enforces commitment to ethics
    Redflex has introduced stringent ethical and procedural requirements following an investigation into corruption in Chicago. Like the Phoenix, which also happens to be the name of the company’s home city, Redflex Traffic Systems has been reborn. Following a headline-making public relations debacle late last year, Redflex has reinvented itself, establishing a series of stringent policies and procedures to ensure ethical business conduct, while continuing to deliver the traffic safety technology and services t
  • January 30, 2012
    Virtual traffic management centres, a new direction in traffic monitoring
    David Crawford picks up a new direction trend in traffic monitoring The surprise winner in the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) category of the recently-announced 2011 OSMOSE (Open Source for MObile and SustainablE city) Awards for European innovations in urban transport, is the Danish city of Aalborg - which doesn't have a TMC. Alternatively, one might consider its 'virtual' TMC as a signpost for the future in medium-sized cities.