Energy Resilience: A fundamental pillar to guarantee a reliable and continuous electricity supply.
Energy Resilience: A fundamental pillar to guarantee a reliable and continuous electricity supply.
April 28, 2025 Achieving this level of resilience requires strategic investments aimed at providing the system with greater flexibility, both in the temporal domain —the ability to adapt to fluctuations in demand or generation— and geographically, through the diversification and redundancy of its infrastructure. The latest studies on electrical resilience agree on an approach based on three fundamental pillars: risk anticipation, the ability to respond…
Seminar: Virtual Power Plants in Chile – Pathways to a Sustainable Future
April 29, 2025 This morning, the Center for Energy Transition (CENTRA) of Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez presented the policy brief “Regulatory and Policy Pathways for Implementing Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) in Chile” at a seminar held in the Entel Room of UAI’s Errázuriz campus, bringing together authorities, academics, and representatives from the electricity sector. The event was led by CENTRA researcher and Director of the Civil…
The urgent need to meet an unstoppable demand
April 3, 2025 The increase in energy demand and its cost has grown by about 20% over the past ten years, and this fact is relevant in a market such as mining. In the coming years, there will necessarily be a strong introduction of new energy sources, based on energy efficiency as a basic principle. About this present and future, we spoke with representatives from…
Energy security: How is Chile preparing for blackouts?
March 24, 2025 Regarding the massive blackout that left 95% of the population without power for several hours on Tuesday, February 25, Rodrigo Barraza, an expert in microgrid systems and energy management, spoke about the causes and possible solutions to a phenomenon of such magnitude. See interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHqX0YyI_hI
New Director Assumes Leadership of the UAI Center for Energy Transition
January 28, 2025 Rodrigo Barraza, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Appointed Director of the Energy Transition Center (CENTRA) at Adolfo Ibáñez University Rodrigo Barraza, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed as the Director of the Energy Transition Center (CENTRA) at the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences of Adolfo Ibáñez University. CENTRA conducts and transfers interdisciplinary research, enabling society to progress toward an energy transition…
Elastocaloric Technology Promises to Revolutionize Current Heating and Cooling Systems
December 3, 2024 In its report “The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024”, the World Economic Forum (WEF) highlighted that elastocaloric technology is a rapidly advancing field, noting that “heat pumps using elastocaloric materials such as nickel and titanium are proving to be more energy-efficient than traditional heating and cooling systems.” The same report warns that as global temperatures rise, the demand for cooling…
Review of Supreme Decree 13: Thermoelectric Plants on Alert
November 28, 2024. Drawing a parallel with those considered undesirable, coal today is regarded as an “unwelcome” fuel due to the high pollution load generated by its combustion. This is why there is a state policy, with a defined roadmap, to eliminate its participation in the national electricity matrix before 2040. In fact, the decarbonization plan (whose ongoing update includes 45 measures) has already made…
Generating our own energy – Opinion column by Rodrigo Barraza
October 15th, 2024 Generating our own energy is not an illusion. Research is advancing and today we can talk about Peer to Peer (P2P) systems, which operate under a scheme of homes that can act as prosumers, with the capacity to generate their own electricity, either with solar panels or as electricity consumers. To be able to implement this technology, a certain degree of…
GENERATOR SET EMISSIONS STANDARD What is its scope?
July 11, 2024 A generator is a system for generating electricity by integrating an internal combustion engine that normally uses Diesel as fuel and that drives an electric generator. Generators are used in industries, commercial buildings and residential buildings to provide a secure power supply to critical equipment in the event of a power outage. In addition, they can be used to reduce costs…
Chile must promote the benefits of heat pumps to encourage their use
July 11, 2024 The transition away from coal and other types of thermoelectric power generation and toward boosting the penetration of renewable sources is a solid first step toward decarbonizing a country. The other important pieces of the puzzle — energy efficiency, electrification, and sustainable transportation — could be more complicated, given that the goal is not a couple of power plants but rather…