Just over a month has passed since Ignacio Sánchez Galán, president of Iberdrola, was photographed hand in hand with the Portuguese president Antonio Costa under the promise of investing 3,000 million to support the energy transition and the Spanish company already has in its hands the environmental permit to build what will be the largest photovoltaic project in Europe and the fifth in the world.
This was announced by the company on Tuesday in a note detailing the project details. This is a plant that will bear the name of the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, located in the Santiago de Cacém municipality, near Sines, a logistics pole in southern Europe, and that will develop 1,200 megawatts (MW) of installed power and will have the Valencian company Prosolia Energy as a partner.
Its commissioning is scheduled for 2025 and then it will be able to supply clean, cheap and locally generated energy sufficient to cover the annual needs of some 430,000 homes, a population equivalent to almost twice the city of Porto.
The installation, whose network connection is already contracted with the Portuguese operator REN, will avoid the consumption of 370 million cubic meters of gas each year, which would have been necessary to produce the same amount of energy in a combined cycle.
The land that will house the project has already been secured, and the construction will generate up to 2,500 jobs, filled mostly by local workers. Thus, the project contemplates a Socioeconomic Actions Program that includes measures such as professional training in the field of energy or support for the tourism sector, in addition to providing solar energy to nearby communities.
“The Fernando Pessoa solar facility marks a new milestone in Europe by combining clean energy ambitions with the generation of positive and tangible environmental and social impacts. We have to reduce our exposure to fossil fuels. We are proud to remain committed to the construction of new clean energy infrastructures in Portugal, as we already did with the Tâmega gigabateria. The collaboration of the Portuguese authorities has also been essential to bring this project to this stage in record time," said Ignacio Galán, Chairman of Iberdrola.
In his aforementioned public meeting with the President of Portugal, Ignacio Sánchez Galán praised the impact that the Portuguese Government's decision to launch a new regulatory program accompanied by a modernization of administrations to promote and expedite the deployment of energy would have on the sector. clean.
"Offering a stable and predictable regulatory framework that would attract investment," he said in contrast to what in his opinion is happening in Spain, where on numerous occasions he has criticized the "legal uncertainty" that dominates the country.
In addition to the one announced this Tuesday, Iberdrola completed the construction of the Alcochete solar complex (46 MW), in the Setúbal district (Lisbon region), a district in which the company has also completed two other photovoltaic facilities: Conde (13.5 MW ) and Algeruz II (27 MW). Construction of the 37 MW Montechoro I and II projects in Paderne (Albufeira) and the 64 MW Carregado project in Alenquer (Lisbon) will begin in early 2023, while the Estoi solar plant (83 MW) will in the Algarve, which also includes battery storage, will come online in 2024.
All the plants belong to the auctions that Portugal held in 2019 and 2020, in which Iberdrola was awarded a total of eight photovoltaic projects – 270 MW, being the largest winner by number of lots in the 2019 auction.
Last year, the energy company also inaugurated in Alto Tâmega, in the north of Portugal, the largest pumped hydroelectric storage project in the country and one of the largest energy storage facilities in Europe. With an investment of 1,500 million, it has three dams and three power plants (Gouvães, Daivões and Alto Tâmega) and a combined capacity of 1,158 MW. The group plans to build a wind farm linked to this facility, which will turn the complex into a hybrid generation plant, which, with its 400 MW of installed power, will be one of the largest wind projects in Portugal.
Iberdrola already operates in the country 92 MW of wind, distributed in three parks: Catefica, in the municipality of Torres Vedras, of 18 MW; Alto do Monção, in Mortágua and Tondela, 32 MW; and Serra do Alvão, in Ribeira de Pena, of 42 MW. Altogether, these plants produce 200 GWh a year, the equivalent of electricity used by 35,000 households.
