Spanish utility Iberdrola has added 500MW of solar capacity during the second quarter of 2023, bringing the total to nearly 5GW.
In its first half of the year financial results, the company registered a net profit of €2.5 billion (US$2.8 billion) during Q2 2023, up 21% from the same period last year.
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Strong performance in the European Union has boosted the EBITDA results to €7.56 billion at the end of June 2023, up 17.3% from the same period last year.
In the past 12 months, the Spanish utility invested €10.5 billion with nearly half (45%) going towards renewables, while region-wise Spain received the most of it with €2.9 billion, followed by the US with €2.6 billion and Latin America with nearly €2 billion.
Installed solar PV capacity reached nearly 5GW at the end of H1 2023, a roughly 1.5GW increase from the same period last year when the utility had 3.4GW of solar installed by H1 2022. More than half of the current installed solar capacity is located in Spain with 3.2GW, up 900MW from H1 2022.
During its Q1 2023 financial results, the company announced more than 4.5GW of solar capacity installed, thus adding nearly 500MW during Q2 2023. One of the projects that achieved commercial operation during the second quarter was in Oregon, the US, with a capacity of 162MW and bringing the total installed capacity in the US to 529MW by the end of H1 2023. In Texas, Avangrid, Iberdrola’s subsidiary in North America, started construction of a 321MW solar plant, while in Oregon two solar projects have construction ongoing and with a combined capacity of 269MW.
Moreover, Iberdrola’s solar activity in Spain has seen its production increase by 31% during the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year.
Spain remains the most important market for the company, not just for the development of renewables projects but with the construction of a PV module assembly plant for which it partnered with Spanish module manufacturer Exiom earlier this year to build a 500MW tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) module assembly plant in Asturias, northwest of Spain, while the utility sought funding for 1.6GW of module annual capacity to the European Commission’s Innovation Fund.
In Europe, the utility secured a power purchase agreement with telecommunications company Vodafone to provide 410GWh of renewable power across Spain, Germany and Portugal.
Ignacio Galán, executive chairman at Iberdrola, said: “This set of results confirms our capacity to execute our plans ahead of estimates, even in the current challenging macroeconomic scenario. This means that by the end of the year we expect a high-single-digit growth in net profit, excluding additional capital gains from asset rotation.”
Iberdrola is forecasting a “high-single-digit” net profit growth for the second half of the year due to strong business performance driven by further investments and added renewables capacity, among others.