Spain is once again the engine of renewable energy in Europe. It has been more than a decade since Spain led the sector with Germany. But he’s back and hard.
Spain has been the star player for renewable investments in Europe and ranks as the first country with 3.7 billion in the first half of 2019, 235% more than in the same period of the previous year.
Renewable energy is experiencing a second wave in Spain. So much so that more than 2 GW of new power have already been installed so far this year, namely 2,082 MW during the first nine months of the year.
This has only connected 450 MW of new capacity to the Spanish electricity system in September alone, of which 288 MW are solar photovoltaic and 162 MW of wind. Thanks to this new power, Spain exceeds for the first time the 30 GW between both technologies, according to the data offered by Red Eléctrica. As of September 30, Spain has 24,048 MW of wind power installed while it already has 6,255 MW of photovoltaics connected.
At the beginning of the year, the Spanish electricity system had 23,507 MW and now stands at 24,048 so about 541 MW has been installed during 2019. In the case of photovoltaics, the difference from December 2018 is 1,541 MW from 4,714 MW to 6,255 MW. Therefore, more than 2 GW of renewables have already been connected so far this year.
This increase in renewable capacity leads Spain to surpass again the 105 GW of installed power nationally. It now stays at 105,808 MW just a handful of megawatts from the 2013 record when it had installed 105,830 MW. In other order, the system is only 25 MW away from breaking the capacity record. Something that will happen during this month of October.
Despite this progress, the 2 GW are quite far from what should be installed before the end of the year. The two main auctions of 2017 put into question more than 8,000 MW that should be added to the system, and all indicate that this figure will not be reached and could be closer to 4,000 MW, that is, half of what was intended.
In addition, with these approximately 4,000 MW being installed during this year, 20% of primary energy renewables in Spain will not be reached by The first of January 2020.
Menú