Month: January 2023

               RWE has commissioned the 44MW Casa Valdes solar farm in Spain. The project is located in the province of Guadalajara, close to Madrid. Casa Valdes is a ground-mounted photovoltaic plant and will be able to supply the equivalent of 30,000 Spanish homes with green electricity annually.  RWE installed 97,740 bifacial modules on an area of about 97 hectares. “The advantage of this approach is that the bifacial cells are embedded in a double-sided glass module by which the solar radiation can be absorbed from both sides – the front and the back of the module. This will help to increase production,” said the company. RWE Europe solar chief Katja Wünschel said: “The Spanish sun is a great partner of the energy transition. And innovative technologies like the bifacial modules used at Casa Valdes help us to make the best out of this energy source and this site. “I am also looking forward to the completion of our solar plants that are still under construction and the further projects to come in Spain as one of our core markets this year.”

Credits: renews.biz [Image: RWE]

               Enefit Green has made an investment decision to build a solar farm in the industrial area of the Estonia Mine in Ida-Virumaa. The project will have a capacity of nearly 3MW and will be located on a platform made of waste rocks. A 27-metre-high structure was built for the solar park on a mine site from waste rock generated during oil shale extraction. This allows to reduce losses due to shadowing and thereby makes electricity production more efficient. Enefit Green will invest up to €2.7m to build the project. Construction of the solar park will begin in the first half of next year, and the park is scheduled to begin production in early 2024. According to Enefit Green Renewable Energy Project Manager Elise Johanna Lill, the solar park is the second one the company is building in an industrial area. “Pre-mined areas, as well as other low-value lands, are very suitable for building solar power plants.

               The development of renewable energy in industrial areas serves several environmental purposes. For example, it offers the opportunity to use waste rock generated during mining as construction material and to supply the mine with green energy,” Lill said. Lill added that the establishment of Estonia Solar Park is part of the company’s growth plan to significantly increase their output of renewable energy. “Enefit Green will quadruple its green electricity production capacity in the coming years. Solar energy has great growth potential for us in the Baltic and Polish markets. Next year, we plan to make investment decisions for the construction of large-scale solar parks in Estonia and Lithuania with a total volume of over 200MW.”

Credits: renews.biz [Image: Enefit Green]