- The eight hectares that the installation will occupy will be able to supply more than three thousand homes and will be located on land available within the Barranco de Tirajana Power Station.
- The eligible investment amounts to €11.5 million, of which €5.6 million correspond to the European Union's Next Generation funds.
- The solar park will avoid the emission of 1,874 tons of CO2 , which is equivalent to planting about 94,000 trees or a 74-hectare forest.
- The facility, which will use 15,000 state-of-the-art photovoltaic modules, will have a battery storage capacity of 10.37 MWh
Enel Green Power España, Endesa's renewable energy subsidiary, will build the largest solar energy plant with battery storage in the Canary Islands, on land that is available in the Barranco de Tirajana area, in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, with an investment of about €11.5 million and an installed capacity of 9.3 MW, which would be equivalent in terms of energy production to the average consumption of over three thousand households and about 7,500 people.
The El Matorral photovoltaic plant, which should be operational by the beginning of 2026 at the latest, will be built on an area covering about eight hectares of land, equivalent to approximately eight football pitches. It will use the latest technology available on the market and will be equipped with 15,000 state-of-the-art photovoltaic modules.
When it is fully operational, this solar energy installation at El Matorral will save 1,874.5 tons of CO2 emissions from being released into the atmosphere, which means it will have an impact similar to planting almost 94 thousand trees or a 74-hectare forest.
The new plant, which is in the phases prior to starting construction, has been granted a subsidy through the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE in Spanish), within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, financed by the European Union through the Next Generation with funds amounting to €5,691,261.23. This will enable Endesa in the Canary Islands to continue the work done in other Spanish autonomous communities where the company already has similar installations with a total production exceeding 600 MW.
At the moment, Endesa is working on the preliminary procedures and once the authorisation has been granted, construction of the civil engineering works will begin. The project will also include environmental measures to minimise the impact on the environment, including the integration of land already converted within the Barranco de Tirajana Power Plant and making topographic corrections to prevent soil erosion.
Job creation
Once this phase has been concluded, the plant will be installed using a pile driver, which will lead on to the next phase involving the completion of the installation of the structures and the 15,000 photovoltaic modules. Once these activities have been completed, the next phase will be completing the electrical installation in accordance with the different test phases and then the plant will be opened. The different phases of construction of the park will provide direct and indirect employment for about twenty workers.
While this last phase is being completed, important landscaped areas with native plants will be incorporated into the environment and these will protect and improve the ecosystems with a significant vegetation screen. All the measures are aimed at the recovery of land transformed over decades by intense human activity.
Endesa, through its subsidiary Enel Green Power España, is moving forward with the construction of this plant towards the goal of total decarbonisation of the Canary Islands by 2040. The company is committed to the union of tradition and innovation, and to sharing and not competing for land use. In this regard, the company will continue to develop new renewable energy installations and including the El Matorral plant, Endesa is now building 23 new projects in Spain. At national level, the company was able to generate its first TWh of solar production with the 25 parks it already had in operation in July 2022, and production currently exceeds five TWh.
About Endesa
Endesa is a leading electricity company in Spain and the second largest in Portugal. It is also the second largest gas operator in the Spanish market. It undertakes end-to-end business including the generation, distribution and retailing of electricity. It also offers electric mobility services, where it is one of the main operators of charging stations in Spain, and, through the Endesa X brand, value-added services aimed at the electrification of energy uses in homes, companies, industries and Public Administrations. Endesa is firmly committed to the United Nations SDGs and strongly supports the development of renewable energies through Enel Green Power España, the digitalisation of grids through e-distribución and Corporate Social Responsibility. The Endesa Foundation is also active in CSR. Our team totals around 9,000 employees. Endesa is part of Enel, Europe's largest electricity group.