Acciona Energía Deploys Energy Storage in Western Chile, Operational by 2027
en.Wedoany.com Reported - Spanish renewable energy developer Acciona Energía has announced plans for two battery energy storage projects. Both projects will be located near existing renewable energy generation facilities: one with a capacity of 20 megawatts and a duration of 2 hours, to be deployed alongside the 50-megawatt Bolarque solar plant in Cuenca province, central Spain; the other, with a scale of 13 MW/26 MWh, is planned for the vicinity of the El Cuadrón wind farm in Palencia province, northern Spain.
Acciona Energía has years of experience in hybrid deployment of renewable energy and storage. In 2017, the company commissioned Spain's first battery storage project integrated with a grid-connected wind farm. Additionally, the company has built an energy storage system using retired electric vehicle batteries within the Extremadura III photovoltaic complex in Badajoz, east-central Spain.
In Spain, such "renewable energy + storage" hybrid deployments are receiving government financial support. Spain's Ministry for the Ecological Transition (MITECO) allocated €433 million (approximately $500 million) earlier this month to fund 524 renewable energy projects co-located with battery energy storage systems, most of which are solar-plus-storage projects. The funding program, named RENOINN 2, approved a total storage capacity of 2.3 GWh this time, eight times the capacity approved in the first round (351.6 MWh).
Outside Spain, Acciona Energía plans to double its battery storage portfolio in Chile, adding gigawatt-hour-scale storage facilities within an existing solar plant in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The project will be paired with the 246-megawatt El Romero solar plant, with a scale of 196 MW/980 MWh, and is expected to commence commercial operation by the end of 2027. Last year, the company also began construction on another 1 GWh battery storage project in Chile, located within the Malgarida photovoltaic complex, which has been operational since 2021.
