The photovoltaic boom arrives in the Madrid Community with two large 300 MW solar farms in the south of the region

• Capital Energy has begun the process to construct two plants with a combined power of 303.8 MW in the municipal districts of Pinto, Parla, Valdemoro and Torrejón de Velasco.
• Madrid is an energy pit: in 2018 it represented 10.6% of the demand and only covered 4.4% of its consumption with 0.4% of the installed power: 458 MW, of which 64 MW were solar.

Capital Energy, the renewable energy projects developer, has commenced the administrative process to construct what will be the two first large photovoltaic farms in this region which, with a combined power of 303.8 megawatts (MW), will multiply the autonomous community’s installed solar energy power by six.

The two projects are in the preliminary consultation phase at the Ministry for Green Transition, which is in charge of the environmental assessment as both have an installed power of more than 50 MW.

Baptised as FV Ortega and FV Gasset, the plants will occupy a combined surface area of 806.5 hectares on agricultural land in the municipal districts of Pinto, Parla, Valdemoro and Torrejón de Velasco. Their developer plans global production of around 602Gwh/year, equivalent to the consumption of some 170,000 homes in a year.

The documentation that Capital Energy has sent to the Energy and Mines Policy General Directorate explains that the site “near to the R-4 and A-4 main roads and several conventional railway lines and the AVE” has “rather favourable solar irradiation conditions”.

As arguments in favour of the project, it states that the regulatory framework “favours the installation of new electricity generation by renewables in Spain; that “solar irradiation in Madrid province enables profitable projects to be developed, taking into account the current cost of the technology”; and that “the area occupied complies with the conditions required to develop large scale photovoltaic projects: capacity for electricity transmission, good topography and access to land at reasonable prices”.

The companies explained to the Ministry that “for several years” it has carried out “a study of the alternative sites for various locations of photovoltaic solar plants in the whole of Madrid province, culminating in narrowing down the search for land” to around the Red Eléctrica sub-station in Valdemoro up to which it is planned to lay a 220 kV line to transmit the energy generated at the farms.

An energy pit

If these projects go ahead, it will be a milestone for the Madrid Community, after, at the turn of the century, and the middle of the gas power station bubble, the French-Belgian group GDF Suez tried to install a large 1,200 MW combined cycle plant in Morata de Tajuña, which was never built.

Madrid has been an energy pit for decades because it consumes much more than it generates and imports 96.6% of its consumption from surrounding regions. In 2018, it represented 10.6% of the national demand for electricity (only coming behind Andalusia and Catalonia) and its production hardly even covered 4.4% of its demand (the lowest percentage in Spain), with just 0.4% of installed power: 458 MW, of which 64 MW were solar, according to REE (Spanish Electricity Networks) data.

REE does not break down its monthly data by autonomous communities, but, in the sector, they rule out that other large farms are being developed in Madrid. Those developed by Capital Energy will be the first.

Captained by Jesús Martín Buezas, Capital Energy explains in its last accounts that it has “a portfolio of more than 10 GW of renewable energy assets in development in Spain and Portugal” of which 7,400 MW are wind-based and 4,800 MW are photovoltaic

The Company “is in an excellent position to become one of the most important players in the sector” and until now has developed farms that it ended up selling to third parties. Last year it sold 710 MW (420 MW wind and 290 MW solar) that were “in at a very advanced stage of administrative processing” to the German investment fund, Aquila Capital Partners, “generating financial income in the 2018 financial year of €30,000,000 and with €15,000,000 payment received”, as explained in its accounts.