By July this year, Europe’s biggest floating solar park will be sitting in Portugal’s Alqueva reservoir. At this moment, two tugboats are moving a huge arrangement of 12,000 solar panels – the size of four football pitches – to where they will dock on the reservoir. Mounted on pontoons, the panels will be fitted with lithium-ion batteries that can store a total excess of 1.5 gigawatts of power.
Providing at least third of the electricity requirements to the neighboring towns of Portel and Moura, the hope is to take advantage of the sunny and beautiful year-round weather that will help them become one of the leading renewable-powered nations in Europe.
The country’s main utility company, Energia Solar EDP, built the solar park on Western Europe’s largest artificial lake. The idea behind the solar park is in line with Portugal’s plan to lessen the country’s need for imported fossil fuels, especially since the rise in prices due to the conflict in Ukraine from Russia’s invasion.
Considering Portugal’s incredibly long sunshine hours throughout the day, and Atlantic winds, they have also quickened their shift to renewables. Despite the fact that Portugal hardly uses Russian-made hydrocarbons, Portugal’s gas-fired power plants are still being affected by the rise of fuel prices.
Aside from probably lowered fuel prices, another advantage of the floating solar park is that it doesn’t take up land space in the small country. Plus any unused electricity that isn’t utilized can be used to pump water into the reservoir, fed through the hydropower system of the dam, which can then create additional power.
EDP group director, Miguel Patena, is in charge of the solar project, and he said that the electricity that’s created from the floating park – which is installed with 5 megawatts (MW) capacity – would also cost them a third of what usually is produced by a gas-fired plant.
According to Patena, “This project is the biggest floating solar park in a hydro dam in Europe, it is a very good benchmark.”
The hope is that by 2030, EDP will be able to offer 100% renewable energy to all forms of infrastructure in the country, which currently produces ‘78% of EDP’s 2.5.6 GW of installed capacity from solar, wind, and hydropower.’
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