Spanish independent power producer (IPP) Sonnedix has commissioned its 150MW Betierra solar portfolio in Spain, bringing the company’s total renewable energy capacity in the country in operation to over 1GW.
The Betierra portfolio consists of three 50MW PV plants in Castilla-La Mancha, eastern-central Spain. Electricity from the portfolio will be sold to US data company Equinix for ten years, as part of a power purchase agreement (PPA) signed last May. The three projects comprise half of a 300MW portfolio acquired from fellow Spanish developer RIC Energy in 2021, with the remaining 150MW of capacity currently in the “late development stage”, according to Sonnedix.
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“The support from local and regional authorities has been instrumental in achieving this milestone, which not only supplies clean energy to Equinix through a long-term PPA, but also contributes significantly to Spain’s renewable energy targets and energy transition,” said Gerson Gonzales Hernandes, head of finance and representative director at Sonnedix in Spain.
The portfolio is also notable because all three solar plants use the same grid connection infrastructure, an important step in streamlining the grid connection process, which has long been an obstacle to new renewable power capacity additions in Europe; figures from think tank Ember suggest that Europe’s grids could lack over 200GW of capacity for new solar installations alone by the end of the decade.
This has been a particular issue for Spain, which has some of the most ambitious solar installation targets in Europe – aiming for 76GW of operating capacity by 2030, up from an earlier target of 39GW by the end of the decade – but has lacked the grid infrastructure to support this new capacity. Analysis from consultancy Aurora and the University of Oxford estimate that Spain is wasting over €2 billion (US$2.11 billion) of solar and wind generation capacity, due to projects not being able to connect to the grid.
The topic of European grid capacity was discussed frequently at Solar Media’s Large Scale Solar Central Eastern Europe event, held this week in the Polish capital of Warsaw, with speakers suggesting that co-located and standalone storage systems could help alleviate grid capacity issues.
