Iberdrola owns 90% of the project and Spain's Instituto para la Diversificación y Ahorro de la Energía (IDAE) owns the remaining 10%. This project is the first one of a series of ten solar electric thermal plants to be developed in Spain by Iberdrola, the world's largest renewable energy developer. All the plants will use parabolic trough.
This troughs will boast an area of 290,000 m2 and will occupy an 135 hectares of land. A total of 120,000 parabolic trough and 13,000 absorbing pipes. “Technologically, it can be considered a little thermal plant in which the boiler will be replaced by a solar park formed by 352 parabolic troughs', said the utility in a press release. Besides, the project will minimize the radiation losses due to shadows, which are a big concern for many other projects.
Annual production will be around 120 GWh, enough to power a 50,000 people town while avoiding the emission of almost 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some 60 permanent jobs will be created by the project (400 additional jobs are needed during the construction phase).
Iberdrola has plans to invest up to 1 billion euros in the Castilla La Mancha region (Southern Spain) in the next three years, which include the construction of 200 MW of renewable energy projects and other improvements.
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