Solar Energy in Spain

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As with all solar cell producers, Isofotón has been limited lately by the dearth of highly purified silicon necessary both for microelectronics and the solar industry. In response they have begun setting up silicon refining operations in Cadiz.

Working with Antonio Luque’s IES, Isofotón has focused research on developing concentrating PV solar cells. Downstairs in the factory, in a small room on the main factory floor, a machine whirrs as thin sheets of tiny dots of solar cells, only 1 mm large, pass through a machine. They will be attached to gold wires and then serve as the focus of the concentrating lenses.

Outside the building, a panel of concentrating PV cells is mounted on a tracker. Unlike standard PV, which can accept all ambient light, concentrated PV cells are most efficient when tracking the sun to appropriately focus the light through the lenses and onto the dots. As such, concentrating solar will likely be most effective on a large scale, like solar thermal, where fields of trackers can be set up to take advantage of the sun’s angled rays.

The material used in these concentrators is gallium arsenide, 50 times more expensive than silicon. But the cells are concentrated 1000 times, demanding 1000 times less material. 

When it comes to traditional PV panels, most companies focus on marketing to the developed world—where money is available for PV and the process is as simple as creating the product and selling it. But Isofotón has also taken the lead in marketing solar power to the developing world, called “rural electrification.” Even the marketing works differently for this segment of the business, as projects must be researched and appropriate financial models developed for each. Isofotón has rural electrification projects around South America, Morocco, Algeria, Indonesia, and South Africa.

Solar power in these poor, rural regions is not simply used for home electricity, but also for applications such as water pumps and desalination. To maintain a lead in this area, in addition to the decades of experience the company has already built up, Isofotón is focusing research on how best to couple solar power with those types of applications, as much of the existing equipment isn’t appropriately built to work with an intermittent energy source.

“If we look to the really long-term, I think that our main market will be rural electrification, because at the end these are the people who don’t have electricity. Most of the energy increase in the world will be in electricity, and most of that will be in developing countries,” says Alonso.
Acciona Solar, the solar energy arm of Acciona Energía, as with the other major companies involved in this field, has seen phenomenal growth rates. The company’s income exploded from about a half million Euros to more than 96 million Euros in only eight years.

In December 2007, the company connected the Monte Alto Solar Field to the grid, the largest installation of its kind in Spain, and one of the largest in the world. It consists of a field of standard PV panels on trackers (which leads to 30 percent greater efficiency), spread out over a long disused agricultural field in the southern part of the state of Navarra, about an hour south of Pamplona.

This is the latest in these fields, known as ‘huertas,’ or gardens, in Spanish. The 9.5 MW facility at Milagro actually has more than 750 owners, investors, from across Spain, each of whom owns one or two of the panels and trackers and receives payments from the electric utility.

Most Spaniards live in apartment buildings and share rooftops, so the options for investing in solar power are limited. “This way they can have the same opportunities as the rest of the world even if they don’t have their own roof,” says Miguel Arrarás, general director of Acciona Solar. There are ten such fields in Spain, though Milagro is the largest so far, and three more about to enter construction phase.

The region of Navarra (where Milagro is located), with local government support, has become a veritable center of renewable energy, with wind turbines arching over the rolling hills and solar fields stretching across open spaces. The region has more than twenty times the watt peak of PV per inhabitant compared to that of Spain, and nearly double that of Germany, world solar leader. This commitment has led to 60% of Navarra’s electricity generated from wind and solar alone.

Because of this, Navarra—and Acciona’s solar fields—have become a perfect site to evaluate the entire system. “We’re testing 30 different kinds of panels,” says Arrarás. “We also have data on the effects of shadows, fog, everything. We have an agreement with two universities just to analyze this data.” He continues, “This is also the perfect place to evaluate what the effect is on the entire grid when, say, there are clouds, because of the high concentration of solar power here.”

The company’s operations are housed in a zero-emissions building on the outskirts of Pamplona. The building’s design incorporates techniques that reduce energy needs by 52 percent from a typical building, such as natural light and carefully placed shading. The remaining energy is produced with PV cells, solar water heating, and finally a small amount of biodiesel. The investments will pay off in ten years, according to Arrarás. Due to the company’s experience, Acciona Solar is also researching ways to improve and promote these high performance buildings.

Acciona has continued to press ahead with PV power plants. At the end of 2008, Acciona connected the largest PV plant in the world to the Portuguese power grid, a 46 MW facility with more than 2500 solar trackers.

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