The Association of Non-Regulated Electricity Customers (ACENOR) opened a new front in the regulatory debate of Small Distributed Generation Facilities (PMGD).
Just days after the Government published the amendment to Supreme Decree No. 88 to incorporate small-scale storage systems into the regime , the union stated that the time had come to eliminate the stabilized price and replace it with supply contracts.
“ The instrument fulfilled its mission, but its continued necessity was never evaluated until the distortion reached such a magnitude that correcting it became essential, and it has been very difficult . The regulation was aimed at promoting emerging technologies, but today it regulates technologies that have low costs, financing, and a very different regulatory environment,” stated Juan Ignacio Gómez , executive director of ACENOR, during its 18th Annual Meeting.
“One of the proposals we have made as an association is to eliminate the band adjustment and mobilize that energy from the PMG and PMGD towards supply contracts in place of the stabilized price,” he said.
The goal is for all projects to compete in the market, to be allowed to allocate that energy at an "efficient value", and for their logic to point to being installed where there is demand.
According to the association's estimates, consumers currently bear approximately US$300 million annually associated with this mechanism. ACENOR even maintains that this amount could have reached US$500 million per year had regulatory changes related to the sector not been recently implemented.
The discussion arises at a particularly relevant time for this segment. The recent Decree No. 1/2026 expanded the scope of DS 88 and went from regulating exclusively generation facilities to also incorporating small-scale storage systems, creating the category of Small-Scale Generation Facilities and Storage Systems (MGPE).
The modification allows the integration of batteries into projects connected to the National Electric System with power surpluses less than or equal to 9 MW, a signal that seeks to deepen the participation of these resources in the operation of the system.
The regulatory change also comes amid sustained expansion in the sector. According to the latest report by Independent Power Generators (GIE) and Systep, small-scale distributed generation (PMGD) projects injected 706 GWh into the grid during March 2026, representing a year-on-year increase of 14.4%.
The data shows that the impact of these projects is no longer marginal. During March, the combined generation of PMGD and PMG reached 12.6% of the total generation of the National Electric System. Of this total, 9.6% corresponded to PMGD and 3% to PMG.
Precisely because of this growing participation, ACENOR believes that the economic signals associated with this regime have increasingly relevant effects on the final supply costs.
A reform agenda aimed at reducing costs
The PMGD proposal is part of a broader agenda promoted by ACENOR to review different components of Chilean electricity regulation, since in addition to questioning the stabilized price, the association identifies inefficiencies in transmission and complementary services.
According to ACENOR's calculations, the expansion processes currently generate additional costs of approximately USD 170 million annually for consumers.
The association also proposes to more strongly incorporate the principle of causality in complementary services and that those costs originating from specific agents be assumed by those who generate them.
In terms of transmission, the proposal includes reincorporating economic location signals through financial transmission rights and improving centralized planning mechanisms to enhance investment efficiency.
“ We need to go back to the fundamentals of regulation and ask ourselves what problem each rule solved and whether that problem still exists ,” the union’s chief executive stated.
According to the entity's estimates, the sum of inefficiencies associated with the stabilized price, transmission and other regulatory charges reaches approximately USD 500 million annually .
“If all these corrections were implemented, one could see savings of $10 to $15 per MWh, which in practice implies savings of around 10% to 15% on the final bill for non-regulated customers,” Gómez concluded.