Iberdrola has secured a long-term PPA from telecoms service provider Orange. The electricity will be delivered by a 328 MW solar plant that the Spanish energy group is building in Spain’s Extremadura region.

pv magazine has spoken to José Antonio Unanue, director of the battery energy storage system business at Ingeteam, the equipment integrator and manufacturer of the first grid-connected battery storage system in Spain, which electric utility Iberdrola launched in Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia, at the end of November.

The French oil company will enter the booming Spanish market through subsidiary Total Solar International thanks to agreements with Powertis and Solarbay Renewable Energy to develop 2 GW of generation capacity.

The projects are located across several Spanish provinces. The seller is Spanish developer RIC Energy.

The ‘deep photovoltaic nowcasting’ project developed by Chile’s Institute of Engineering Sciences of the University of O’Higgins, Canada’s Laval University and Japan’s Kyoto University, seeks to make short-term, high-resolution projections of solar energy generation.

The country saw the addition of 3.975 GW of new solar installations last year. Most of this capacity comes from solar projects selected by the Spanish government in the renewable energy auction held in July 2017.

Portuguese gas company Galp Energía says it will become “the largest solar energy company in the Iberian peninsula”. The agreement includes operating PV plants with an installed generation capacity of 900 MW plus a further 2.9 GW under development.

The minister of environment and energy transition has told parliament two auctions for large scale solar will be held this year, with a new procurement round now planned. The minister revealed energy storage may play a part in the capacity tenders.

The Spanish business has secured a 10-year power purchase agreement signed by Swiss electric company Alpiq.

Spanish energy company Endesa is planning to build a 1,725 MW renewable energy complex in the Spanish town of Andorra, in the province of Teruel. The €1.48 billion project is set to comprise 1,585 MW of solar generation capacity, 139 MW of wind turbines and a large scale storage system, and will replace coal power plants Endesa wants to close in Andorra (Teruel) and Compostilla (León).