Spain

Mondragon will install a 100 MW manufacturing line in the third quarter at Solarge’s factory in the Netherlands. Production is scheduled to start by the end of this year.

The proposed system architecture is claimed to offer more stability compared to conventional floating structures and reduces by up to 93% the contact area of the system with the water. The first system prototype was recently developed on a water reservoir in Alava, in the northeastern territory of the Basque Country.

The Spanish authorities applied solar curtailment for the first time on Easter Sunday, when power generation exceeded demand and the wholesale electricity price went from €168.50 ($182)/MWh to just €3.70/MWh.

A Spanish-Italian research group has developed a solid-state thermal-to-electric energy converter based on hybrid thermionic-photovoltaics (TIPV) for different applications. It consists of a three-terminal TIPV device made with a tungsten (W) thermionic cathode, a PV/anode structure made of an indium phosphide (n-InP) anode, and a photovoltaic cell based on indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs).

Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport in Madrid will open a new 120 MW PV plant as part of a bigger, €350 million ($380.8 million) solar deployment plan.

Alter Enersun has started its relationship with inverter manufacturer Huawei. The Spanish developer’s CEO Jose Morlanes says that the company follows a route of choosing Tier 1 suppliers for all its components, including inverters, to keep downtime of his projects at the bare minimum. With Huawei he found an inverter supplier to fulfill he high demands.

Scientists in Spain have developed a new heat pump that can produce 6.49 kWh of heat for each kilowatt-hour of power it consumes. The device could generate hot water at a temperature of up to 75 C.

Ikea’s holding company, INGKA Holding, will invest €340 million ($371 million) to acquire nine PV systems from Enerparc. In the future, Ikea said it will work with Svea Solar to sell residential PV systems.

Researchers in Spain have developed a way to integrate tree-based agriculture with solar power plants based on north-south-oriented, single-axis trackers. They have identified an ideal geometric space between the module rows for crops to avoid affecting irradiance capture or the trackers.