In the southern Spanish province of Castile-La Mancha, construction began at the end of October 2019 on a large-scale photovoltaic installation on a 90-hectare green field site.
With over 105,000 PV modules, the solar park will generate over 80 million kilowatt hours of climate-friendly power every year. This corresponds to the electricity consumed by around 22,600 three-person households. The subsidy-free photovoltaic plant is being built by the German company Athos Solar GmbH.
“The solar power generated saves around 41,500 tonnes of CO2 every year,” explained Christian Linder, managing director of the photovoltaic company. According to the project plan, the 40-megawatt peak installation will be connected to the grid in the spring of 2020, after a construction period of around six months.
Due to a decrease in investment costs and high solar irradiation, the electricity market in Spain is one of the first where photovoltaics is cheaper than all other forms of power generation.
The plan is to complete the construction of the entire plant by the second quarter of 2020.
The solar plant will initially be connected to the public power grid via a private 132-kilovolt (kV) transformer substation and then via a 400kV transformer substation that is part of the public infrastructure. The 400kV transformer substation has the largest transformer currently installed in Spain. Over time, renewable energy plants with an installed capacity of 800 megawatts in total will be connected to it. The large solar park is located in part of an area specifically developed for the use of renewable energies.
Following plant commissioning, the Heidelberg-based company plans to sell the solar park to institutional investors. The construction and operation of the completed green field installation will be funded through the sale of the generated power on the electricity exchange, or via a long-term power supply contract (Power Purchase Agreement) between a power consumer and the plant operator. In both cases, the revenue received from the sale offers an attractive return on the invested capital, even without subsidies.
