Electric companies are looking for new formulas to make more and better use of their facilities renewable. Spain has begun a massive rollout of new green facilities that will continue for decades to come. Amid an avalanche of projects in development, plans by companies foresee a new boom in the renewable energy sector in Spain as they seek to make more use of the land on which their facilities are located and make the most of coveted hotspots. electrical grid..
Big groups like Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy, Acciona or Solaria Dozens of large hybrid renewable power plant projects are being prepared. hybridization It is a process that involves combining various types of green energy in the same installation to make greater use of rural land as well as existing infrastructure for access to the electricity grid.
Hybridization, which will become most common, will involve placing solar panels between the wind turbines of wind farms, but companies are also preparing projects to combine green electricity generation equipment with storage (although this is still a method in its infancy, pending further development). using high capacity batteries).
Energy companies have already started to obtain the necessary permits to develop these new ‘mega plants’ that will combine windmills, solar panels and/or batteries. Electrical Network Spain (REE)The manager of the electricity system had to rearrange its statistics on the status of grid connection permits to reflect the impending new boom.
Dozens of projects emerge
The data accumulated so far on plant hybridization demands predict that this method will have an important role in the national green sector. REE accumulates Hybridization requests with a total power of 11,000 megawatts (MW)Confirming the interest of the renewable sector in participating in this exercise to make the most of their facilities and foreseeing billion-dollar investments to achieve this.
According to official REE records at the end of October, renewable energy plants already in operation (mostly wind) with a total power of 7,300 MW have requested permission to combine with another green facility. They also reflect that another 3,400 MW installation already has permission to access the grid but is not yet operational, and another 300 MW installation is only in the pipeline and has already processed the request to connect to the grid but is still in the pipeline. I’m waiting to get permission.
Red Eléctrica decided to separate the data of all facilities requesting hybridization from these monthly statistics. When a plant becomes hybridized, the technology is no longer entirely wind or solar, and so dozens of renewable energy plants in operation disappeared from statistics for weeks because they did not fit into the hitherto used statistical sections, as in the case of El Periódico de España. The emergence of the Ibérica Press Group. Records on grid access procedures now include separate sections for wind farms, photovoltaics and hybridisation.
Aragon This is the autonomous community with the most renewable installations currently under construction and with plans for hybridization of 2,100 MW. Castile la Mancha (2,000MW), Andalusia and Castile and León (1,100 MW each) and Estremadura (with 900 MW). Aragon is also the one attracting the most demand for projects not yet operational, with a new 1,800 MW hybrid linked to a green ‘mega-complex’ being built by Endesa on the site of Andorra’s former coal power plant in Teruel. .
Access points to the electrical grid have become the envy of energy companies. In some regions, grid saturation and the explosion of new renewable plants have turned these connection points into a scarce and highly contested asset, even leading to speculative moves to resell projects just to get permission to connect to the grid.
Hybridization of different technologies in a single facility serves to better utilize the network connection, because by sharing the connection point it is not necessary to build new power lines or substations. Hybrid power plants are located on land already reserved for renewable energy production, allowing for shared pathways and facilities for the operation of both technologies and reducing the environmental impact of two independent plants. Additionally, this method provides greater stability in feeding from the same discharge point with more constant electricity production.
Companies’ plans
Industry giants such as Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy, Acciona Energía or Solaria They have subscribed to the strategy of hybridizing plants and have million-dollar plans to build new facilities or renovate and adapt existing facilities using this method. In most cases, these are projects to combine wind and photovoltaic energy in the same facility, although some are already considering combining renewable energies and batteries.
Nature has implemented a plan to analyze the hybridization potential of the production park in order to participate in this new revolution by developing new projects or expanding existing facilities. A few months ago the group closed the acquisition from the Ardian fund of a renewable portfolio in Spain, which includes 435 MW of hybrid projects under development in Castilla y León, Andalusia, Galicia and Catalonia.
Apart from this acquisition, Naturgy is also preparing other projects, especially in Castilla-La Mancha, which will convert twelve wind farms into hybrid solar energy production facilities with the aim of becoming operational in 2025. In addition to these wind hybridization plans – the company is also working on the development of three other hydro integration projects with photovoltaic energy and five other battery storage projects to hybridize photovoltaic facilities already in operation.
iberdrola The construction of Spain’s first hybrid wind and solar photovoltaic power plant was completed in Burgos last September, and work is currently underway to commission it with a power of 74 MW and an investment of 40 million euros. Bet Endesa Due to hybridization in Spain, it will use the renewable ‘mega complex’ that it will build on the site of the former coal power plant in Andorra in Teruel as its flagship. The just transition project for the region includes the construction of seven hybrid facilities with a total power of 1,800 MW and an investment of over 1,500 million. For your part, Activate Energy There are 2,300 MW photovoltaic hybridization projects in different stages of development.
A significant part of hybridization projects are wind farms, where electric companies decide to include solar panels between wind turbines. In the case of Solaria, the process is exactly the opposite. The company, which specializes in the development of photovoltaic power plants, decided to install mills in some of them. Solaria’s plans include developing a 3,000 MW installation portfolio combining solar and wind; of these, 1,200 MW are currently under construction and the remaining 1,800 MW will be commissioned next year.