A recording has been made in Spain in recent years. large-scale deployment of new facilities from renewable energies. The implementation of wind energy in the country, which started in the late nineties, is a story of accelerations and pauses, a graph of peaks and valleys. After the initial commissioning initiated with subsidies, the expansion of wind turbines came to an absolute halt between 2014 and 2017 due to the moratorium decided by the Government of Mariano Rajoy. Since then, growth has been almost continuous throughout the country, with greater or lesser intensity depending on the year.
All autonomous communities, except Madrid They have wind farms in their areas. But despite the distribution in almost the entire region, the weight in both regions is quite unequal. According to the latest report on the macroeconomic effects of the sector Wind Cooperation (AEE)With data for the end of 2022. Three autonomous communities (Castilla y León, Aragón and Castilla-La Mancha) concentrate more than half of the wind energy installed in the country, and only two regions (Castilla-La Mancha and Aragon) concentrated 80% of the new wind energy installed last year.
sultanate of Castile
At the end of last year, wind power plants with a capacity of 200,000 liters came into operation. Just over 29,800 megawatts (MW) after adding 1,640 new MW during the year, according to records obtained by the sector’s employers’ association directly from energy and development companies (and these records vary slightly downwards according to the records of the system administrator Red Eléctrica de España, due to methodological differences).
Castilla y León concentrated more than a fifth (22.5%) of all wind energy in the country, with more than 6,500 MW of power; This is followed by Aragon (17%, over 4,900 MW), Castilla-La Mancha (16.5%, around 4,800 MW), Galicia (13.3%, around 3,860 MW) and Andalusia (12.3%, around 3,550 MW). following.
Of the more than 1,600 MW commissioned last year, 50% were in plants in Castilla-La Mancha (837 MW) and almost 30% in Aragon (492 MW), far from these sizes. León, Catalonia, Canary Islands, Navarra, Asturias and Andalusia.
More than 1,300 wind farms
In Spain at the end of last year 22,042 wind turbines. More than 22,000 windmills located in 1,345 wind farms and 1,053 towns across the country. That means wind farms are in operation in almost one-eighth of the more than 8,100 municipalities in Spain, and more than 11% of the Spanish population lives there. “Wind farms tend to be located in less populated municipalities (emptied Spain), given that they generate economic activity and employment, helping to build up the population,” AEE emphasizes.
The communities with the highest number of plants are Castilla y León (276 parks, 21.2%), Aragon (187 parks, 14.4%), Galicia (183 parks, 14.1%), Andalusia (167 parks, 12.8%) ) and Castilla-La. Mancha (160 parks, 12.3%). Analysis of the distribution of wind farms by province reveals that there are wind farms in all of them, except Madrid, Córdoba, Girona, Alicante, Badajoz and the autonomous cities Ceuta and Melilla.
Braking during deployment
The expansion of wind energy has continued throughout this year, but employers in the sector are warning that there is a slowdown in the commissioning of new plants in 2023 and that the pace of installation is not sufficient to meet targets. It was determined as 2030. 1,640 megawatts (MW) of new wind energy will be commissioned in 2022, but This year employers expect only about 600 MW to come into operation (The increase in power means about 150 new wind turbines have been added, up to about 22,200 windmills now, AEE estimates).
“Due to the speed of administrative procedures and pending projects, between 2,000 and 3,000 MW of capacity is expected to come into operation every year. “About 10,000 MW between now and 2026,” it predicted. Juan Virgilio Márquez, managing director of AEE. The problem is that to achieve the new power set by the National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate (PNIEC), the Government’s roadmap to 2030, around 5,500MW will need to be activated each year for the rest of the decade. The administrator’s plan calls for reaching 63,000 MW of wind energy in 2030, or about 33,000 new MW in five years.
Production leader
the wind prevailed again in the electricity sector in Spain. Wind farms are now largest source of electricity generation It has replaced nuclear power plants (traditional leaders in production) and natural gas plants (last year) in the Spanish market, according to records of Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the manager of the national electricity system.
Wind power has risen to the generation leadership for the third time in a decade, although it has always been second on the podium in the last decade. For the first time in history, wind energy became the main production technology in 2013; It was not repeated until 2021, when the energy crisis began; and will do so again in 2023, which has become a record year for renewable energy as, for the first time, wind, solar and hydropower generate more than half of the country’s entire electricity.
REE estimates that wind facilities will generate approximately 63,700 gigawatt hours (GWh) overall this year, accounting for approximately 24% of that generation. It is ahead of nuclear power plants (20%) and gas power plants (17%). The technology that will record the biggest increase in production will be solar photovoltaics, which will exceed 37 thousand GWh with an increase of 34 percent and become the fourth largest production source with a share of 14 percent.