Departamento Ingeniería Eléctrica

With his project, “Development and Validation of an Ultra-Fast Modular Charger for Electric Vehicles with Simultaneous, Priority, and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Charging Functions,” Dr. Matías Díaz of the Department of Electrical Engineering was one of just 11 researchers nationwide to receive funding from the National Research and Development Agency (ANID) under the R&D Advanced Technologies 2025 call. This highly selective grant focused on critical areas, including fair decarbonization, climate resilience, digital transformation, and diversification of the productive matrix.

The University of Santiago, Chile (Usach), through its Department of Electrical Engineering (DIE), and the Latin American Energy Organization (Olade) signed a specific collaboration agreement aimed at strengthening regional energy integration and developing specialized human capital training.

Climate change and public policies to reduce carbon emissions are rapidly transforming Chile’s electricity system. This challenging shift involves a gradual move away from fossil fuel technologies like coal, diesel, and natural gas power plants, towards renewable sources such as wind and solar power.

Unlike conventional power plants, which operators could dispatch based on demand, these new renewable sources depend directly on climatic factors like solar radiation and wind intensity. This introduces a new level of variability and uncertainty into the electricity grid.