How the sun waters grapes in the world's driest desert

Chile's Atacama desert is the driest desert on Earth. it boasts some of the highest levels of sunshine in the world. In the north of Chile, clouds appear on about 30 days a year at most.

Such weather conditions, combined with huge stretches of empty land along the Pacific coast, should make it an ideal place to tap the sun for energy.

But solar panels are almost nowhere to be seen.

So a small solar park in Copiapo Valley seems strangely lost among the orange-red hills and mountains of the Atacama.

It is operated by Subsole, one of Chile's major producers of fresh fruit, and its German partner, renewable energy company Kraftwerk.

Copiapo is a green oasis in the desert, with Subsole's vineyards thriving thanks to a natural underground water reservoir.

And to irrigate those vines, Subsole turns to the sun.

Solar energy will help the firm to pump water during the day and then irrigate in the evening or at night.

The plant's energy capacity is only 300 kWp (kilowatt peak) - enough to power a 20-storey building - but Roberto Jordan, from Kraftwerk's subsidiary in Chile, says that it is the first working industrial-size installation in the whole of Atacama.

And the desert, he adds, is capable of providing much more.