Spanish solar tracker company Soltec has announced a supply deal with fellow Spanish solar developer X-Elio in the same week as it launched a new utility-scale solar tracker system.
367MW tracker supply to X-Elio
Soltec will supply 367MW worth of its single-row, dual-axis SFOne trackers to an X-Elio solar PV project in the Spanish region of Murcia. The deal will see Soltec ship 5,948 trackers to the site.
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The product is smaller in design than many trackers, Soltec said, which “minimises visual impact and maximises energy efficiency.” The site is expected to produce 748,000MWh of renewable power annually.
Raúl Morales, CEO of Soltec, said: “As Murcians, it is an honor for Soltec to contribute to the decarbonisation of the Murcian economy and to be part of the largest photovoltaic plant developed in the Region of Murcia. The construction of this solar plant not only represents a step forward in decarbonisation but will also have a very positive impact on the local economy of the area.”
Both Soltec and X-Elio are very active in the Spanish PV market. Soltec signed a deal in December 2023 to supply around 300MW of trackers to the solar PV portfolio of Spanish oil major Repsol, constituting three projects.
X-Elio has also recently closed two separate financing deals to support its Spanish project development pipeline. In December it secured €35 million from Spanish financial services firm Bankinter to support 67MW of solar projects, then in March 2024 it bagged €89 million to support three projects with a collective 123MWp capacity.
These deals followed the developer’s acquisition by Canadian asset owner Brookfield Renewables in March last year.
SFOneX tracker launch
The same week as this X-Elio deal, Soltec launched a new tracker solution which it said reduces cost and environmental impacts for utility-scale solar PV projects.
The SFOneX tracker is a 25-metre-long dual-row system which Soltec said is adaptable to various terrains and types of projects. The system’s use of double rows connected by a flexible transmission axis “reduces the number of tracking motors and controllers by half”, in turn reducing project costs.
The company said that SFOneX also contains programmes which protect against high winds and hail. Trackers generally “stow” themselves to protect against hail damage, a phenomenon which PV Tech Premium examined earlier this year.
Hail is a particularly pertinent issue in the US, where “golf ball-sized” hailstones damaged a 350MW PV plant in southeastern Texas last month. Soltec has signed two significant US deals in recent months, to supply trackers to projects in Missouri and Virginia.
