EDP today inaugurates the new floating solar photovoltaic power plant at the Alqueva dam reservoir in Portugal – the largest floating solar plant in Europe on a reservoir.
The project features approximately 12 thousand photovoltaic panels and will have an annual production capacity of 7.5GWh. It is expected to supply electricity to around1500 families in the Portel and Moura region.
EDP said Alqueva will become a kind of ‘living laboratory’, by allowing the complementarity between dispatchable (hydroelectric) and non-dispatchable (photovoltaic) renewable energy production technologies to be tested, as well as long-term energy storage technologies (pumping) and short-lived (battery). With the power of 1MW and storage capacity of around 2MWh, the battery will use lithium-ion technology, which is already widely used in the electrical sector globally. The pumping system allows the use wind and solar energies, in periods of lower consumption, to pump water from the reservoir and, in this way, reuse it to produce a new hydroelectric power, increasing the flexibility of renewable energy.
