Floating PV make headway in Iberia

• Spanish renewables firm Acciona has appointed Spain's very first floating installment and also utility EDP has settled the very first, 1 MW stage of a 4 MW project at the Alqueva water storage tank in southern Portugal.

Acciona has commissioned Spain's first grid-connected floating solar plant, in the southern region of Extremadura. The renewables business received permission for the installment in February and also completed commissioning on Monday.

The 1.1 MW selection gets on the southern coast of the Sierra Brava storage tank in the district of Zorita, in the district of Cáceres, and also extends 12,000 m2-- 0.07% of the 1,650 ha reservoir.

The pilot project features 3,000 solar modules of different kinds, alignment and also inclination across 5 floating structures and also will examine the performance and also procedures and maintenance expenses associated with the different sets up. Acciona stated the plant was developed "as a technical demonstrator that will certainly enable numerous photovoltaic panels, inclinations and also floating systems to be examined in a combined setting." The panel ranges consist of bifacial modules and a vertically-inclined section.

Wild animals

The programmer stated it would certainly additionally observe the effect of the variety on birds and fishes and also had actually set up nesting boxes for a secured species of bird which stays in the location in addition to including 2 islands to encourage nesting on the storage tank.

Somewhere else on the Iberian peninsula, Portuguese utility EDP has completed the initial, 1 MW stage of a 4 MW floating PV project at the Alqueva storage tank in southerly Portugal. The finished project, said the utility, would certainly consist of 11,000 solar panels across 4ha as well as would certainly create 6 GWh per year as well as be attached to a battery. A 2nd system will certainly organize a 20-foot container which will house a transformer as well as tool voltage cells.

The Sistema Fotovoltaico Flutuante do Alqueva project will certainly be the nation's first megawatt scale floating solar plant. EDP constructed its very first floating PV system, with french expert Ciel & Terre, in November 2016. That project, the Central Solar Fotovoltaica Flutuante do Alto Rabagão setup, is a 200 kW pilot system at the Alto Rabagão Dam on the Rabagão river.