EFPAAC

RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

By lvaro Partida Senz de Miera

Introduction
Everybody knows what is renewable energy but, how many do we know about it? Why
is it so important? What role it has in the Spanish energy consumption?
What is renewable energy?
We can define renewable energy as energy that is collected from resources which are
naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and
geothermal heat.
A key to reduce the climate change
Combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation has caused the atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) to increase by about 43% since the beginning of the age
of industrialization. As we know, CO2 is one of the main causes of the greenhouse effect.
In the year 2014, CO2 (Carbon dioxide) emissions in Spain was over 224 millions of
tons (4.6 ton per habitant). Electricity production and transport are the main causes of the CO2
emissions. They are responsible of the 30% and the 20% respectively of the total CO2
emissions. Therefore, is very important to reduce CO2 emissions, and obviously the use of the
renewable energies have a key role to get it.

Energy consumption
When we talk about energy consumption, we usually think only about electricity
consumption. Nevertheless, electricity is only a small fraction of the total energy consumption.
Then, it is important to differentiate between primary energy consumption and final energy
consumption.

Primary energy
Primary energy is an energy form found in nature that has not been subjected to any
conversion or transformation process. It is energy contained in raw fuels, and other forms of
energy received as input to a system. Primary energy can be non-renewable or renewable.
In the year 2014, the total primary energy consumption was over 118,000 ktoe
(kiloton of oil equivalent).

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RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

Primary Energy Consumption (ktoe)

COAL
14%

10%
NATURAL GAS

20%

13%

PETROLEUM
NUCLEAR

43%

RENEWABLES (HYDRAULIC,
SOLAR, WIND AND OTHERS)

Final energy
Final energy designates the energy as the consumer in the different sectors receives it,
be in the primary (without a transformation process) or secondary form (with a conversion
process). It includes for example electricity or gasoline. In year 2014, Spanish final energy
consumption was over 83,525 ktoe.

Final Energy Consumption (ktoe)

COAL

51%

NATURAL GAS
PETROLEUM PRODUCT

18%

23%
2%

ELECTRICITY

6%
RENEWABLES AND
WASTE

The question: how many renewable energy we consume?

Historically, renewable energy in Spain had had a little role. In year 1990, It involved
only the 4% of the primary energy consumption, and the 1% of the electricity production, only
represented by hydraulic power. However, in year 2000, the different governments
implemented a strong renewable energy plan, and the renewable energy production had a
large and fast increase. Nowadays, the consumption of energy from renewable sources, has
increased to 14% of the primary energy, and around 40% or 50% in the electrical energy
consumption.

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RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

Renewable VS Non-Renewable (Primary Energy)

14%
RENEWABLE
NON-RENEWABLE
86%

As we can see in the graphic chart, the energy consumption from renewable sources is
very low.

Electrical power from renewable sources

One of the more usual forms of energy that we consume is electricity. In the year
2014, the electrical consumption was over 227.635 GWh (gigawatt-hour).

Electricity producion by source

10%
5%

NUCLEAR

2%

COAL

22%

COMBINED CYCLE
HYDROELECTRIC

19%
17%
17%

8%

WIND POWER
SOLAR POWER
COGENERATION AND OTHERS
RENEWABLE THERMAL

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RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

Renewable VS Non-Renewable Electrical Energy

43%
57%

RENEWABLE
ELECTRICITY
NON-RENEWABLE
ELECTRICITY

As we can see in the graphic chart, electrical power generated by renewable sources
represents nearly the fifty percent of the total electrical power consumption. Nevertheless, if
we really want to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions we must to increase this value.

Main renewable sources of electrical energy

Renewable Electricity Production
4%
19%

HYDROELECTRIC
31%
WIND POWER

9%

SOLAR POWER
37%
COGENERATION AND OTHERS
RENEWABLE THERMAL

Wind power

Spain is the world's second biggest producer of wind power. In 2014, the year-end
installed capacity was 23 GW and the annual production was 51,439 GWh, a share of total
electricity consumption of 21.1%.
In 1990, wind power energy production was insignificant, but since the year 2000, it
began to grow, and nowadays wind power is the main source of renewable electric power, and
one of the major electricity producers.
The technology used in Spanish wind power production, is the horizontal axis wind
turbine with three blades. Wind turbines operate on a simple principle. The energy in the wind

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RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

turns two or three propeller-like blades around a rotor. The rotor is connected to the main
shaft, which spins a generator to create electricity.
The wind turbines are grouped in wind farms which can have more of 80 turbines, and
a large extension. In Spain are around 1000 wind farms, with a total number of 17.000 wind
turbines. The major producing regions are Castilla y Len, Castilla La Mancha, Andaluca and
Galicia, which have over the 60% of the total Spanish production.

Hydroelectric power in Spain

Hydroelectric power is the older renewable electricity producer in Spain. The first
hydroelectric power stations began construction in 1985, and they were used only in
workshops and industries.
Little by little, more hydroelectric power stations were built and by the first years of
the 20 century they had a contribution of 39%. During the first half of the 20th century,
hydroelectric power was the first electricity producer. The following years, the hydroelectric
production had a large increase and by the end of the year 1960, hydroelectricity was the 84%
of the total electricity production. However, in the 1960s many other power stations which
used petroleum products, and in 1969, the nuclear power plant Jos Cabrera was built, so that
the hydroelectric generation decreased to the 50%.
th

Nowadays, the electricity generation technologies in Spain have changed a lot, and in
the year 2014 the electricity generated by hydraulic power was around the 17%. Nevertheless,
hydroelectricity continues to be very important to our electric system, with a total annual
power production over 35.755 GWh and more over 800 power plants.
We can differentiate three types of hydroelectric power plants:

Conventional hydroelectric power plants

Most hydroelectric power comes from the potential energy of dammed water
driving a water turbine and generator. The power extracted from the water
depends on the volume and on the difference in height between the source and
the water's outflow. This height difference is called the head. A large pipe (the
"penstock") delivers water from the reservoir to the turbine
This kind of technology represents over the 50% of the total hydroelectric
power produced in Spain.
Some of the most important conventional hydroelectric power plants are:
Aldeadvila Dam on the Duero River, with 1.243 MW is the biggest Spanish
hydroelectric power plant; Jos Mara de Oriol Hydroelectric Power Plant,
Alcntara with 957 MW of power; and Villamarino Hydroelectric Power Plant on
the Tormes River (Castilla y Len) with 857 MW of power.

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RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SPAIN

Pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants

This method produces electricity to supply high peak demands by moving

water between reservoirs at different elevations. At times of low electrical demand,
when the electricity price is lower, the excess generation capacity is used to pump
water into the higher reservoir. When the demand becomes greater, and the
electricity price is higher, water is released back into the lower reservoir through a
turbine. To do this, this kind of power plants usual uses a reversible pump-turbine.
Pumped-storage schemes currently provide the most commercially important
means of large-scale grid energy storage and improve the daily capacity factor of
the generation system. Pumped storage is not an energy source, and appears as a
negative number in listings.
In Spain, there are 19 pumped-storage plants (including mixed pumpedstorage plants). Some of the most important power stations of this type are: La
Muela (Valencia, 628 MW), Sallente (Lrida, 446 MW) or Tajo de la Encantada
(Mlaga, 360 MW).

Run-of-the-river hydroelectric power plants

Run-of-the-river hydroelectric stations are those with small or no reservoir

capacity, so that only the water coming from upstream is available for generation
at that moment, and any oversupply must pass unused. A constant supply of
water from a lake or existing reservoir upstream is a significant advantage in
choosing sites for run-of-the-river.
There are over 1000 power stations in Spain, with power less than 10 MW.

Solar power in Spain

Spain is one of the countries with best conditions to generate solar power. It has high
irradiation solar levels, days with large daylight hours and a lot of sunny days. Nevertheless,
Spanish solar energy generation is so low, and it represents only over the 5% of the electricity
production and around 9% over the total renewable electricity sources.
There are two types of solar energy exploitation

Photovoltaics
Photovoltaics is the method of converting solar energy into direct
current electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic
effect. A photovoltaic system employs solar panels composed of a number of
solar cells to supply usable solar power.

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Between 2005 and 2013, there was a large increase in the number of
photovoltaic power plants. Nowadays there are around 7000 MW of
photovoltaics energy power installed in Spain. Some of the more important of
these plants are: Olmedilla de Alarcn Photovoltaic Park (Cuenca) with 60 MW
of power; Puertollano Photovoltaic Park (Cuenca) with 57.6 MW of power; and
La Magascona y La Magasquilla Photovoltaic Park (Cceres) with 34.5 MW of
power.

Solar thermal energy. Concentrated solar power

Concentrating solar power (CSP) plants use mirrors to concentrate the
energy from the sun to drive traditional steam turbines or engines that create
electricity. The thermal energy concentrated in a CSP plant can be stored and
used to produce electricity when it is needed, day or night. There is 2354 MW
of power installed in Spain, based on two different technologies.

Parabolic trough power plants

They consist of a solar field filled with hundreds or thousands of solar

collector assemblies. Each SCA is an independently tracking parabolic trough
solar collector consisting of four major subsystems: parabolic reflectors,
receiver tube metal, support structure and the tracking system, to track the
sun position during the day.
In parabolic trough collector, long, U-curved mirrors focus the rays of
the sun into an absorber pipe. The pipe is seated above the mirror in the
center along the focal line and has a heat-absorbent medium (mineral oil,
synthetic oil, molten salt etc.) running in it. The suns energy heats up the oil,
which carries the energy to the water in a boiler heat exchanger, reaching a
temperature of about 400C. The heat is transferred into the water, producing
steam to drive turbine.
This is the most used concentrated solar power system in Spain, there
are around 45 parabolic tough power stations, with a power of 50 MW each
one, making a total power of 2200 MW.
Some examples of these power plants are Andasol (1, 2 and 3), in
Granada, with a total power of 150 MW.

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Solar tower power plants

Solar power towers consist of a large field of sun-tracking mirrors,

called heliostats, which focus solar energy on a receiver atop a centrally
located tower. The enormous amount of energy, coming out of the sun rays,
concentrated at one point (in the middle of the tower), produces temperatures
of approx. 550C to 1500C.
The gained thermal energy can be used for heating water or molten
salt, which saves the energy to continue producing electricity while the sun is
not shining. Heatened water gets to steam, which is used to move the turbinegenerator. If it is a molten salt plant, the molten salt exchanges its heat with
the water to generate steam. This way thermal energy is converted into
electricity.
In 2007, the first power station of this type, PS10 solar power plant
was opened in Spain, near Seville, with 11MW of power. Since then, two other
solar tower power plants have been built, Gemasolar (Seville, 20 MW) and
PS20 (beside PS10, 20MW).

The problems
Renewable energy has two main problems that hinder its development:
The first problem with renewable energy is that it is difficult to generate the quantities
of electricity that are as large as those produced by traditional fossil fuel generators.
Another disadvantage of renewable energy sources is the availability of supply.
Renewable energy often depends on the weather conditions. For example, hydro generators
need rain to fill dams to supply flowing water. Wind turbines need wind to turn the blades, and
solar collectors need clear skies and sunshine to collect heat and make electricity. When these
resources are unavailable so is the capacity to make energy from them.

The future
Due to the Spanish economic crisis, since the year 2008, the energy consumption
decreases year by year. As a consequence of this, the power capacity production is much
larger than the consumption. For this fact, the construction of new power plants is paralyzed,
and investment in new renewable plants is too low.
Besides, the bad government decisions and the poor state of large companies like
Abengoa, generate an uncertain future to the development renewable of renewable energy in
Spain.

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Information sources

WEB

http://www.endesaeduca.com/Endesa_educa/recursos-interactivos/el-sectorelectrico/xvii.-aspectos-generales
http://www.xtec.cat/~cgarci38/ceta/historia/origenes.htm
http://www.energiaysociedad.es/ficha/1-2-historia-de-la-electricidad-en-espana
http://www.foronuclear.org/es/
http://lisas.de/
http://www.protermosolar.com/
http://wikipedia.org/
http://elperiodicodelaenergia.com/
http://www.aeeolica.org/

DOCUMENTS

La Energa en Espaa 2014. Ministerio de industria, energa y turismo. Gobierno de

Espaa. ISSN (en lnea): 2444-7102
El Sistema Elctrico Espaol 2014. Red Elctrica de Espaa. Depsito legal: M-200242015
Almacenamiento de Energa Mediante Bombeo. Carlos Mendvil Ruas. Iberdrola.

TRANSLATION ASSISTANCE

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