Spain has announced its fourth renewables auction round, to be held on 22 November, with 1.8GW of solar capacity sought to accelerate the decarbonisation of the country’s power system.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition (MITECO) also announced it will accept the scaling up or hybridisation of existing installations for this latest round.
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Moreover, if some of the allocated capacity is not entirely filled for solar PV (1.8GW) or wind (1.5GW), the capacity could be transferred to the other technology.
This will be the fourth auction Spain has held. The first was held in January 2021, when more than 2GW of solar was awarded, and the second in October 2021, when just 866MW of solar capacity was awarded.
While the third auction, which was supposed to take place this April, will finally be held on 25 October with a procurement round of 520MW of renewable capacity, including 140MW for distributed solar.
The announcement came alongside a series of measures Spain will implement in the coming months to reduce its gas consumption by up to 5%, as per the European Union pledge to reduce gas demand ahead of winter and accelerate renewables in what could be a record year for solar deployment in Europe with 40GW forecasted.
Earlier this year, the Spanish government said it will introduce a windfall tax on power companies and banks starting next year to fund measures designed to help Spaniards with soaring inflation.
Furthermore, MITECO also announced the launch of a public proposal designed to accelerate the deployment of energy storage co-located with renewable projects.
