Endesa inaugurates its first solar plant in Spain hybridized with a lithium battery system

The Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy of the Canary Islands, Mariano Hernández Zapata, inaugurated this past Thursday, together with the mayor of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Marco Aurelio Pérez Sánchezand to the director of Endesa in the Canary Islands, Pablo Casadothe El Matorral solar plant, the first in Spain hybridized with a lithium battery system.

The El Matorral solar plant is located inside the Barranco de Tirajana thermal power plant, in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, in Gran Canaria. The new facility has an installed power of 8.25 MW, that is, the average annual consumption of about 3,000 homesand has a lithium-ion battery system (BESS) of 4.2 MW (megawatts) of power capable of maintaining the average consumption of about 2,000 homes for two hours, as explained by Endesa.

This battery system constitutes an electrical backup system capable of improving the robustness of the network, thanks to ‘grid forming’ technology, a pioneer in Spain. In addition, it presents technological characteristics for energy applications, such as modularity, high energy density, and high charging and discharging efficiency. This allows lithium batteries to store more energy in less space and at a lower weight.

In this way, it becomes the first and largest hybrid photovoltaic plant with a battery in the Canary Islands, capable of adapting to the particular conditions of isolated systems and avoid the spills that are so worrying on these islands.

El Matorral is not only a pioneer for being the largest hybridized solar plant in the entire archipelago, but it is also the only one in Spain to have inverter technology grid forming.

This technology, among other things, aims to simulate the behavior of a conventional thermal or hydraulic generating set, through the contribution of synthetic inertia to the system, improving the robustness of the system. Thus, the system allows launching an almost immediate response to a sudden change that may occur in the operating conditions of the electrical network, issuing a response that seeks to compensate for that change.

Thanks to the batteries, the insertion of renewable energy on the island is maximized, facilitating a fluid and safe integration of solar energy into the grid. This allows to significantly reduce polluting emissions, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and move towards a more sustainable, efficient and environmentally friendly energy model.