Solar panels replace diesel at a Chile salmon farm
Solar panels now feed power into the Mowi Isla Huar salmon farm on Huar Island in the Los Lagos region of southern Chile, the first floating solar installation at a fish farm in the country. The Norwegian company Alotta Energy Chile built a 50 meter circular floating platform of marine grade solar panels rated at approximately 300 kilowatts, expected to generate about 350,000 kilowatt hours a year. AKVA group integrated and now maintains the floating structure, and Fjord Maritime supplied the battery storage that lets the site draw on stored solar power after dark. The system sends power to the site in a set order, solar first, battery second, and diesel generators only as backup.
Reported by AKVA group Chile after about a year running the system, replacing an earlier launch time estimate near 50%.
Show the numbers
| Diesel and grid power replaced | 40 to 50% |
AKVA group Chile, the company that integrated and now maintains the platform, reported the 40 to 50% figure after about a year of the system running, down from an early launch estimate near 50%. Mowi frames the shift as part of a wider push across the industry.
For the industry to move toward more sustainable standards, working with suppliers and other partners to promote the incorporation of new technologies to minimize impacts is key.
Ricardo Gantenbein, Seawater Production Manager at Mowi Chile. Source 1.
Alotta says the technology proven at Isla Huar is ready to spread well beyond 1 farm.
The solar hybrid technology, tested off the Norwegian coast, demonstrates that renewable energy is now ready to replace diesel in global aquaculture.
Kari Elin Hildre, chief executive of Alotta Energy Chile. Source 1.
One retrofit against a much bigger diesel habit
More than 600 active salmon and trout farming sites operate across the Los Lagos, Aysen and Magallanes regions of Chile, and Alotta states that industry burns an estimated 60 million litres of diesel a year, emitting about 160,000 tons of carbon dioxide from that fuel alone. The retrofit at Isla Huar is expected to avoid about 350 tons of carbon dioxide a year, a figure Mowi and Alotta describe as equal to planting 14,000 trees or protecting more than 12 hectares of native forest. Dividing 350 tons into 160,000 tons puts the pilot at about 0.2% of the diesel emissions the whole industry produces a year, a division this outlet performed on the 2 sourced figures, not a claim either company makes directly, a reminder that 1 retrofit is a small first step against a much bigger diesel habit.
The Isla Huar figure is source 1, and the industry figure is source 5. Both are tons of carbon dioxide a year at very different scopes, 1 pilot against the diesel dependent industry across Chile, and this outlet places them side by side to show scale, a comparison neither source states directly.
Show the numbers
| Isla Huar pilot | 350 |
| Chile diesel dependent farms | 160,000 |
Diesel generators may stress the fish, not just burn fuel
Displacing the generators themselves, not just their fuel, may matter for the fish these farms raise. A reviewed experiment cited in coverage of the project links low frequency noise from diesel generators to chronic stress markers in farmed Atlantic salmon, a welfare concern separate from the diesel exhaust and carbon dioxide the generators also produce. A solar and battery system that lets diesel generators sit idle most of the time cuts that noise along with the fuel.
Alotta is scaling up to chase Chile diesel dependence
Alotta was founded in 2020 and raised 63.5 million Norwegian kroner in a funding round in September 2025 to accelerate its international growth. In August 2026 Alotta named Mauricio Cerda, who has more than 25 years of experience in Chilean and Latin American aquaculture including earlier roles at Mowi itself, as Managing Director of Alotta Energy Chile, a hire aimed at the more than 600 diesel dependent farms the company wants to convert next.