Indeed, here in Chile we have a lot of hydropower, but the overwhelming majority of it is located on the center and south of the country (where most of the population lives), while the big solar projects are located on the north (where most of the mining activity happens).
Being such a long country this means that there are big distances between hydropower and solar plants (1500+kms) rendering inefficient to make use of combined energy sources due to energy loss on the transmission lines and the cost of building these transmission lines.
In fact, the power grids of the north (SING) and the power grids on the south/center (SIC) are not yet connected [0], causing a huge excess of energy on the north system due to the recent addition of solar plants. The excess of energy is being sold to Argentina [1] instead of being used on the south, making me wonder what interesting things we should be doing with this excess... (mining bitcoins, datacenters, etc).
Indeed, here in Chile we have a lot of hydropower, but the overwhelming majority of it is located on the center and south of the country (where most of the population lives), while the big solar projects are located on the north (where most of the mining activity happens).
Being such a long country this means that there are big distances between hydropower and solar plants (1500+kms) rendering inefficient to make use of combined energy sources due to energy loss on the transmission lines and the cost of building these transmission lines.
In fact, the power grids of the north (SING) and the power grids on the south/center (SIC) are not yet connected [0], causing a huge excess of energy on the north system due to the recent addition of solar plants. The excess of energy is being sold to Argentina [1] instead of being used on the south, making me wonder what interesting things we should be doing with this excess... (mining bitcoins, datacenters, etc).
[0] http://www.nuevamineria.com/revista/se-nos-viene-la-intercon... [1] http://fen.uahurtado.cl/2016/noticias/quien-lo-diria-chile-e...