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- Iberdrola is planning to build Europe’s largest solar farm.
- Spain is the leading market in Europe for subsidy-free PV.
Iberdrola, one of the largest utilities in terms of renewable generation, is planning to build a 590 megawatt solar farm in Caceres, Spain. The project – named Pizarro – will come online in 2022, making it Europe’s largest, ahead of Iberdrola’s Nuñez de Balboa 500-megawatt solar plant. The levelized cost of electricity for utility-scale PV in Spain reached 49 euros/MWh in 2019 – the lowest in Europe. This is 12% below the Spanish wholesale power price, which has averaged 55 euros/MWh this year, and creates an opportunity for merchant solar projects and makes Spain the leading solar market in Europe.
However, it is not all good news for solar. Spain’s target of 42 gigawatts of new solar by 2030 raises the risk of future price cannibalization, with some developers projecting a 15-euro/MWh discount on baseload prices for PV by 2030.
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