Spanish renewable production exceeds 100 pct of country’s demand for 9 hours

For a nine-hour period last week, Spain’s renewable energy generation exceeded 100% of demand, a taste of what can be expected in the future.

The Spanish daily newspaper El País reported late last week that renewable energy generation exceeded demand between 10am and 7pm on Tuesday May 16 – it wasn’t the first time renewables had generated enough to cover all demand, it was the longest.

Figures reported to El País by state electricity provider Red Eléctrica de España (REE) showed that this new high-water mark for the country’s renewable energy transition took place on a typical weekday, when energy demand and consumption is higher, as compared to a holiday or a weekend, when demand falls.

While Spain’s remaining fossil fuel and nuclear sources didn’t stop generating during that period, it is nevertheless a taste of things to come when renewables overtake fossil fuels.

In the meantime, Spain was able to export surplus energy to France, Portugal, Morocco, and Andorra, as well as consuming extra energy at its pumped hydro plants.

Also worth noting is that this 9-hour period of increased renewable energy production took place at the same time as three of Spain’s seven nuclear reactors were inactive. By 2030, Spain will have decommissioned three nuclear reactors.

The country’s increase in wind and solar generation capacity is similarly impactful when taking into account the impact of drought conditions reducing waterflow at the country’s hydropower facilities.

Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, has overseen a huge increase in the level of renewable energy, particularly solar PV. The country ended 2022 with 19,113MW of installed solar capacity, an increase of 23% over the 14,580MW installed as of the end of 2021.

Additionally, Spain boasted nearly 30GW of wind by the end of 2022 and 17GW worth of hydropower. In total, in 2022, Spain added 6.2GW of new wind and solar capacity to the grid.

“What is relevant is that this is not something cyclical, but on the way to being structural, both because of the fall in demand and, above all, because of the increase in photovoltaic generation,” said Natalia Fabra, a professor of economics at the Carlos III University in Madrid who spoke to El País last week.

“There are many lessons to be learned from what happened on Tuesday: the importance of interconnections, because, with the ones at our disposal today, discharges cannot be used; the importance of storage; the need to accelerate electrification, which is lagging far behind; and the need to bring demand into the central hours of the day, which is when renewables produce more.”