ACCIONA Solar, a subsidiary of ACCIONA Energa, has put the largest photovoltaic facility in Spain into service at Castejn (Navarre).
The 2.44 MWp facility consists of 400 solar trackers belonging to 279 owners and represents a total investment of 19 million euros for these owners. Over the weekend, the owners received the documents that accredit them as the owners of their installations.
The solar gardens – a name registered by ACCIONA Solar – are sites that bring together small, individually owned photovoltaic installations. Their energy management and performance are optimised because the infrastructure and common services are shared. The sixth solar garden in Navarre
The owners of the installations will visit the site tomorrow, accompanied by representatives of ACCIONA Solar, to see the solar trackers that will turn them into electric power producers. The electricity produced by each panel is sent to the national grid and is invoiced separately by each owner.
The trackers on the site will generate around 4.4 million kilowatt-hours per year of clean and renewable electricity, with production equivalent to the consumption of more than 1,400 households. This level of production will avoid the emission of 4,307 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, with a purifying effect on the air equivalent to that of 215,000 trees through the process of photosynthesis.
This facility is the sixth of its type developed by ACCIONA building plot in Navarre. Overall they represent a capacity 10.20 MWp distributed among 1,673 solar trackers belonging to over one thousand people.
Prior to the Castejn project solar gardens entered service at Sesma (1.57 MWp), Arguedas I (0.98 MWp), Arguedas II (2.05 MWp), Rada (1.71 MWp) and Cintrunigo (1.46 MWp). The solar garden at Castejn covers a site of around 110,000 m2. Each of its 400 solar trackers has 36 single crystal silicon panels (or modules) (BP model with Saturno technology) mounted on a structure of 50 square metres in the form of a grille.
These structures are programmed to follow the sun from east to west, depending on the different position of the sun every day of the year. They turn on an azimuth plane at an inclination of 45 degrees to optimise the capture of the sun’s rays, which are then transformed into electric power by the photovoltaic cells in the solar panels.
The trackers, of Buskil technology, have been developed by ACCIONA Solar and offer an increase in energy production of up to 35% in comparison with conventional fixed panel systems.
The solar garden model responds to the need to make investment in solar power affordable to a larger part of society. An individual facility represents an investment of 47,000 euros, with payback over around 10 years taking into account existing government aid, tax breaks and remuneration for photovoltaic solar energy envisaged in the legislation.
Apart from reducing costs and increasing efficiency, the grouping of installations in solar gardens allows greater security, simpler management and the use of technical solutions that are not viable in independent systems e.g. solar tracking, highly reliable connection to the grid, the series production manufacture of components, the development of simulation software to calculate annual production, or experimentation in the generation field.
The service provided by ACCIONA Solar includes the comprehensive management of the solar gardens, including (among other things) invoicing, administrative procedures and the control of the production of each owner from its central office. The owner can check his/her daily, monthly and annual production via the Internet.
ACCIONA Solar currently has facilities under construction and planned for a capacity of over 30 MWp. These are located in Navarre, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands and other Spanish regions.
Loading...