Spain’s Balearic Islands assign 362 MW of solar in auction

• The Spanish government has selected 55 solar installations in the procurement exercise. About 256 MW of the projects it awarded will be built on Mallorca, while Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera will host 61 MW, 6 MW and 2 MW of new capacity, respectively.

Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition has selected 55 PV power projects with a combined capacity of 326 MW, in the Balearic Islands’ first-ever renewable energy auction.

The projects, which are expected to increase the share of clean energy in the archipelago’s electricity mix from about 2.5% to 10%, will become operational at the beginning of 2022. The vast majority of them will be smaller than 10 MW, the Spanish government said. They will require an estimated investment of around €260 million, with around €40 million in public support to be provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

According to the Spanish government, 46 selected projects with a combined capacity of 206 MW will be built in Mallorca, while Menorca is expected to host six projects, or 61.8 MW of capacity in total. The smaller islands of Ibiza and Formentera will account for only 6.2 MW and 1.93 MW, respectively. The authorities did not provide any other information about the auction, including final prices.

In a separate statement, Spanish renewable energy provider Endesa Enel Green Power España (EGPE), a unit of Italian energy group Enel, revealed it had secured 72.4 MW in the auction.

The Spanish archipelago aims to become free of self-generated CO² emissions by 2050 by making its energy system 100% based on renewables. Solar PV currently represents most of the renewable energy capacity that has been built across the Balearics thus far, at around 80 MW of installed capacity.