Spain is Raising its Stake in Utility-Scale Battery Storage
Renewable energy developers Zelestra and EDP have signed two long-term power purchase agreements (PPA) that will expand their combination of utility-scale solar energy and battery storage brought together for the first time in Spain’s grid history.
The companies announced Tuesday that the two new PPAs would add about 462 MWh of battery storage to 181 MW of direct-current solar capacity across the portfolio. The new PPAs are built on an original 2025 agreement which detailed the hybrid solar and storage project in the Trujillo, Extremadura region.
Altogether it brings the EDP-Zelestra partnership to four Spanish projects totaling more than 500 MWh of renewable capacity with four-hour duration storage. Portuguese utility and global renewables project developer EDP will be the off-taker for both power generation resources.
“Zelestra and EDP have built something together that is unique in the Spanish market: a commercial partnership that is unlocking large-scale storage capacity that will benefit the wider energy system,” Jaime Burguete, CEO of Zelestra in Spain, said in a statement. “These four hybrid projects show that energy storage is bankable in Spain, and we expect this segment of the market to be the main growth area in the years ahead. It also means that every megawatt-hour moved into the evening or early morning is clean power the system would otherwise have had to find elsewhere.”
Earlier this year, Zelestra and EDP moved to hybridize an existing solar energy plant in Cáceres. The plans for the developing 160 MWh of battery energy storage is intended to balance and complement the 50-MW Pizarroso solar facility which began operations in 2023.
“We are continuously developing new solutions that combine technology, market expertise and flexibility assets to unlock greater value from clean energy,” said Pedro Neves Ferreira, CEO of global energy management at EDP. “By integrating storage with renewable generation, we can enhance system resilience, improve efficiency and accelerate the electrification and decarbonization of the economy.”
Spain’s electricity planners are increasingly adopting renewable energy resources. Low-carbon energy accounts for about 75% of the nation’s electricity resource mix, led by solar, wind, nuclear and hydropower.
Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica has tallied the installed battery energy storage capacity at nearly 200 MW across the country. While far below the battery capacity in the U.S., Spain’s installed energy storage has grown nearly 600% in the past year.
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Rod Walton is head of content for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.
Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
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EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.
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