Rain seen diluting Chile wholesale electric prices
Wholesale prices are those Chile's electricity generators charge the country's distributors. Typically, they represent nearly 60 percent of the total price paid by residential consumers.
"We expect a reduction of between 5 to 10 percent in wholesale prices in October and we will most likely see a fall in regulated prices into 2009," Diego Celedon, an analyst with Santander GBM, the bank's research unit, told reporters.
However, much will depend on how the volatile peso fares in coming months, as the government fixes its prices in dollars, he said.
In April the government decided it would cut wholesale electricity prices by 5.2 percent in the country's heavily populated south and center, citing a strong appreciation of the peso against the dollar.
Chile is in the midst of an energy squeeze, with Argentina restricting its exports of natural gas and costly oil derivative imports stoking domestic inflation.
Chile's main electricity generators are Endesa Chile END.SN, AES Gener CHG.SN and Colbun COL.SN. The big distributors include Chilectra CHE.SN and CGE CGE.SN.
Related News

Nuclear plants produce over half of Illinois electricity, almost faced retirement
CHICAGO - Nuclear plants have produced over half of Illinois electricity generation since 2010, but the states two largest plants would have been retired if the state had not created a zero emission credit (ZEC) mechanism to support the facilities.
The two plants, Quad Cities and Clinton, collectively delivered more than 12 percent of the states electricity generation over the past several years. In May 2016, however, Exelon, the owner of the plants, announced that they had together lost over $800 million dollars over the previous six years and revealed plans to retire them in 2017 and 2018.
In December 2016, Illinois passed the Future Energy Jobs Bill, which established a…