Renfe aims to become more energy independent by building solar plants
Solar plant in Granada, Spain (illustrative image)
Spanish railway operator Renfe plans to build a 20 MW solar panel facility to power its trains, after which many will follow. Most of the generated electricity will be used for train traction, with any excess power being sold on the market.
Want to read more?
You have read all of your free premium articles for this month. Please become a subscriber to keep reading.
Subscribe now!
Take advantage of our exclusive offer to get full access to all premium content.
Shouldn’t the headline say ‘energy independent’?
Or solar energy dependent?
Hi, yes indeed it should be energy independent, thanks for pointing that out. It’s now corrected.
This is probably a stock photo from a decade-old solar installation with 2-axialsolar tracking. Nowadays,solar farms are usually built with fixed installation of modules, and less often with one-axial tracking of the sun.
20 MW might yield 30-35 GWh annually, equal to 0.03 – 0.035 TWh. RENFE used 2.46 TWh in 2019. So that solar farm provides a little over 1 percent of total power demand.
Though the solar production curve does not follow the demand curve of train operations, power from around 20 – 25 of such plants could fully serve trains, while a higher solar share would require some storage or peak solar productions that the railway cannot take up. East-west orientation of panels would also improve usability.