EDP to invest €3.5 million in floating solar park

EDP is to invest €3.5 million in a floating solar park on the Alqueva reservoir in the Alentejo.

The platform will have 11,000 panels with an estimated production of 6,000 MWh, replicating an industrial scale project on the Alto Rabagão reservoir at Montalegre near Vila Real in the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal.
In a statement to Lusa, the President of EDP Produção, Rui Teixeira confirmed that the pilot project for the floating platform at Alto Rabagão, which has been in the test phase since November 2016 “exceeded expectations,” with an energy production 6% above forecasts since the project began with an energy efficiency greater than on-land solutions.
That was the reason why EDP will not press ahead with the new Alentejo project on an even bigger scale and complexity than the one at Alto Rabagão given that Alqueva, the largest artificial reservoir on the Iberian peninsula, has a water-powered power station with a pumping system water to be recycled for electricity generation.
“We started off by thinking about scaling up this solution at Alto Rabagão by taking advantage of other dam reservoirs that we have in Portugal but Alqueva is one of the areas of Portugal with the best solar radiation, enabling solar panels to be fitted without having many shadows,” said the EDP director.
The Alqueva project will be on an industrial scale with 11,000 solar panels — compared to the 840 at the dam in Trás-os-Montes with an estimated annual production of 6,000 MWh (compared to 300 MWh from the pilot project at Alto Rabagão), which is the equivalent of the electricity consumption of one quarter of the population of Portel (Évora) and Moura (near the Spanish border) .