Galp opens a solar park that can provide power to 80 thousand families

This Friday, Galp opened a solar photovoltaic park in Alcoutima, in the Algarve, that can power 80,000 homes, which the government says is “in line with the priorities” of the country’s energy transition.

The open-source project “is in line with the government’s priorities for the energy transition, which prioritizes […] sovereignty, independence, autonomy of our country, and also provides electricity at competitive prices and, above all, avoids greenhouse gas emissions,” emphasized the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Duarte Cordeiro.

A government official attended the opening ceremony in the municipality of Alcoutim of a “major project” of photovoltaic solar energy with a capacity of 144 MW (megawatt), the investment of which amounted to more than 70 million euros.

According to Gulp, the new power plant produces enough electricity to supply 80,000 families while avoiding 75,000 tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions.

“We’re going to take the sun from Alcoutim into the tank of your car,” Galp executive president Filipe Silva said for his part, considering using electrons produced in that device with electrons from another, in Sines, to produce green hydrogen.

Earlier this week, Galp announced that “a 100 MW green hydrogen electrolysis plant will be built that will produce up to 15 thousand tons of renewable hydrogen per year,” which will allow it to replace “about 20% of current gray hydrogen consumption and could represent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 110 thousand tons per year (scope 1 and 2, CO2e).”

The Alcoutim installation, which has an estimated annual production capacity of 250 thousand megawatt-hours of electricity, consists of four photovoltaic plants – San Marcos, Visoza, Pereiro and Albercas – and has 252,532 solar panels covering an area of ​​250 hectares. .

Galp said that thanks to these parks, the company currently has an installed capacity of 1.4 GW (gigawatts), which provides 5.5% of the photovoltaic energy of the Iberian Peninsula.

“Panels [solares] Alcutima will decarbonize Sines,” insisted Filipe Silva, adding that the sun in the Algarve municipality “will end up in the precipitation” of the Portuguese.

According to the data provided, Galp has eleven solar parks in operation or under construction in Portugal and Spain. These assets will be responsible for producing approximately 2.4 TWh (terawatt-hours) of renewable energy in 2023.