Grid congestion learnings from Chile
OCTOBER 27, 2026
MAEVE ALLSUP | Grid startup Splight’s dynamic congestion management software is now being used to increase the capacity of two transmission corridors in Chile, targeting chronic renewables curtailment across the country’s windy south.
Instead of relying on empty wires to absorb grid shocks, Splight’s software taps capacity from batteries or other assets on the grid itself, coordinating them to ramp down rapidly if a line trips. That reduces the need to hold line capacity in reserve, allowing more power to flow under normal conditions. It’s a distinct approach from technologies that primarily focus on monitoring the status of the grid, like dynamic line rating, which refines estimates of how much power lines can safely carry based on weather.
In Chile, the country’s abundant solar and wind resources are often far from its major load centers, resulting in a transmission bottleneck. Last year Chile curtailed more than 6 terawatt-hours of wind and solar, partly because the grid couldn’t move it to where it was needed.
Now, Splight says its system has increased usable capacity by 60% on two 220-kV corridors in Southern Chile, which carry power from several of the country’s largest wind farms to a major substation, and then on to the national grid and major population centers further north.
The deployment in Chile, though focused on the generation side, offers a proof point for using fast-responding resources to help get new customers hooked up to the grid faster.
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