Nunez de Balboa Solar Plant in Spain.

Nunez de Balboa is a photovoltaic solar plant situated in Usagre, Badajoz, Spain and is the biggest of the kind in Europe. The project is developed by a Spanish energy company Nunez de Balboa in partnership with Ecoenergias del Guadiana. The solar power scheme involves an investment worth €300m ($328m). It is financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB) together with the Instituto de Credito Oficial (ICO). Iberdrola clinched a long-term power purchase agreements (PPA) with Uvesco Group, Kutxabank and Euskaltel, to boost sustainable energy consumption. The company aims to install 3GW of new renewable power in by 2022 and commission 10GW by 2030. Green Power Monitor, a DNV GL subsidiary, was awarded contract to monitor the power facility using its GPM SCADA management solution. The monitoring duties entailed controlling the plant’s devices individually, executing commands and acquiring real-time data allied to energy production.

Nunez de Balboa is installed with a DC power of 500MW featuring 1,500 Vdc technology in solar panels and inverters. It has over 2,000km cables of medium and low-tension. The scheme incorporates 1.43 million solar photovoltaic panels fixed on 288,000 ground mounts. Covering a tract of about 10km², the panels possesses a total weight of over 12,100t. Additionally, the power plant is fitted with 115 inverters and two substations. The whole power grid connection system was created as part of the scheme. The solar panels in the power plant generate DC power, which is then converted using inverters into AC. The power produced is taken to the 400kV Bienvenida substation in the Badajoz province. When completed, the Nunez De Balboa facility will generate 832GWh of clean electricity annually for 250,000 people, while also offsetting the emission of 215,000 tonnes (t) of CO2.

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Nunez de Balboa Solar Project Timeline

2018
The Nunez de Balboa scheme is backed by three long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) which were signed in 2018. Iberdrola’s ten-year PPA agreement for the project with Kutxa bank in July is the became world’s first PPA to be signed between a bank and power company. The second project’s PPA was signed I October with Euskaltel, representing Spain’s first PPA to be signed with a telecommunications operator.

2019
Iberdrola picked Cemosa to offer technical assistance for the first MWh plant construction in February. The plant’s construction started in March and was done in December. It offered over 1,200 jobs with 70% being provided to locals. GCLSI, a Chinese company was tasked in supplying solar modules with a total capacity of 150MW under a contract provided in March. Some Spanish companies like Elaborex, Imedexsa, Cubillana and Instituto Aeronautico were also part of the scheme. The Instituto de Credito Oficial (ICO) and European Investment Bank (EIB) also signed a funding agreement in Madrid with Iberdrola in July.

2020

The first MWh of power was fed to the electricity grid in April, which marked the solar plant commissioning. Nunez de Balboa had a grid connection maximum capacity of 391MW.

2021
In addition to the maintenance and operation tasks inherent to such facility, the solar plant personnel had to balance the operation of the main equipment (inverters and plant regulator), implementing the performance and status alerts for the different elements. Additionally, photovoltaic procedures, which were not existing in Spain were defined and applied. Núñez de Balboa had installed capacity of approximately 500 MW and needed an investment of around 300 million euros. In the fifteen months it had been operating commercially, the photovoltaic plant accumulated a production of 1,126.62 GWh supplying clean energy to about 345,000 homes and avoiding CO2 emission of 162,000 tonnes.