Chile is making progress in implementing the opportunity cost for storage systems, and the discussion is beginning to shift towards how the value of stored energy should be determined .
The National Electric Coordinator works on a calculation derived from the centralized optimization of the system, while actors in the sector such as Valgesta Nueva Energía propose incorporating into the process economic and technical information provided by the owners of the BESS themselves.
The definition will have concrete effects on operations: the opportunity cost will be used to decide the present or future use of stored energy and could ultimately affect the order of merit, dispatch, price formation, and settlements. The debate is gaining momentum with 5,789 MW and 25 GWh of BESS currently in operation and testing , according to the latest data presented by the Coordinator.
“The opportunity cost doesn't come from outside; it's built from within,” stated Juan Pablo Ávalos , Deputy Manager of Programming and Economic Analysis at the Coordinator, explaining the methodology the organization is developing. The calculation should arise from the operation's own programming and, technically, from the dual values associated with the energy balance constraints of the storage systems.
Valgesta introduces a nuance regarding the information used to arrive at that valuation.
“The owner of a battery has economic and technical information about their asset that the Coordinator can hardly reproduce in full,” the consultancy stated.
The proposal stipulates that operators would internalize variables such as degradation, efficiency, specific constraints, cycling strategies, and the value they assign to conserving energy for certain periods, and then report this valuation according to defined rules and formats. Dispatch would remain centralized under the Coordinator, who would incorporate this information along with technical constraints and the general conditions of the National Interconnected System (SEN).
This point becomes relevant as the calculated cost ceases to be a purely technical reference. Valgesta warns that its incorporation into the operation could transfer methodological differences to the dispatch, pricing, and economic transfers of the market, and therefore proposes avoiding making valuation dependent exclusively on increasingly complex administrative reconstructions.
The Coordinator sets a deadline for implementation
The Coordinator has already begun working on a three-stage roadmap to implement the new mechanism.
“We have 24 months to implement the opportunity costs in the operation. Of those 24, we already have 22 left,” Ávalos stated.
The first step will be to incorporate a new post-intraday scheduling stage , executed more frequently, to update the BESS loading and unloading profiles in response to new forecasts and changes in system status.
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In a second phase, this tool will begin to determine opportunity costs and allow them to be gradually applied in the operation, accompanied by specific rules that must be documented and made available to the industry.
The third stage plans to use these values in a "full digital" environment, integrating them within an automatic economic dispatch system that delivers instructions to the storage systems distributed throughout the SEN.
The presentation itself warns that the scale achieved by this technology makes automation necessary. The Coordinator's scheduling model already represents 51 BESS (Basic Substation Energy Storage Systems), in addition to 235 busbars, 327 transmission lines, and approximately 1,700 generating units.
The portfolio will continue to grow. In addition to the 5,789 MW and 25 GWh currently in operation and testing , the CNE's Works Plan, as presented, incorporates another 4,195 MW and 17 GWh by 2027. So far in 2026, the BESS (Basic Energy Storage Systems) have injected 2.56 TWh of energy into the system.
What does Supreme Decree No. 32 establish?
The framework for this process was established by Supreme Decree 32, published on June 17. The regulation stipulates that the Coordinator must calculate and use the opportunity cost of manageable energy to minimize the present and expected future costs of system operation and failure. For the facilities covered, this value will be considered their production cost.
The regulation also allows the operator to use different methodologies depending on the technology or storage capacity and requires that the assumptions, parameters, and methodologies be public and transparent. Furthermore, the calculation must be updated to incorporate information such as available dispatchable energy, renewable generation forecasts, demand, and changes in the operating conditions of the National Interconnected System (SEN).
Today, batteries present a unique characteristic compared to conventional power plants: they have limited energy and intertemporal constraints, but their marginal production cost is not directly comparable to that of a thermal power plant's fuel. Therefore, their charge and discharge profile is centrally determined through scheduling and is not conventionally incorporated into the order of merit.
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