spain

Spain’s electrical supply industry is caught in a decade long death spiral of failed energy policy, over-reliance on imported fuels, and massive debt. Their new taxes on nuclear energy, an attempt to reduce utility debt, are likely to worsen their economy.Spain imports fuel for about 51% of their electricity production in the form of...[read more]

Germany, once the world’s leading market for solar power, is pulling back its subsidies.Q Cells, once the world’s largest solar company, just went bankrupt.This isn’t happy news. If the country that birthed the Green Party cannot sustain its support for solar, what does that tell the rest of us?It should tell us that it’s time (actually...[read more]

  The purpose of this study is to show the impact of concentrated solar power, CSP, and PV Solar feed-in-tariffs, FITs, in Spain which has the largest installed base of CSP and the second largest installed base, after Germany, of grid-connected PV solar systems in the world about which much data is available. http://1bog.org/top-10-...[read more]

The government can’t make up its mind to support gas, solar, nuclear, or none of the above(NucNet contributed to this report.) Spain is an energy island in Europe with less than 2% of its power coming across the border from France. This fact makes energy policy a critical success factor in forging the economic future of the country where...[read more]

Government ties renewal to election cycle (NucNet) May 25 - Spain needs to renew the licenses of its eight commercially operational nuclear reactor units and plan for the construction of three new units by 2035 if it is to maintain a competitive and sustainable electricity mix, the president of the Spanish nuclear industry group Foro...[read more]

The New York Times has a fascinating story on the solar power industry boom and bust in Spain created by shifting public policies. Similar effects have been observed from shifts in subsidy support for renewable power development in the United States, though because the subsidy was smaller and spread over a larger area the consequences...[read more]

Carbon Commentary has an excellent article on how renewables can provide large amounts of electricity into an electrical grid - in this case Spain's - (Spain’s variable wind and stable electricity networks. Yet if you listened to some people spouting PR for the nuclear power industry, you'd believe this is impossible. One of the...[read more]

Andasol 1 is Europe’s first parabolic trough solar thermal power station, which went online in Nov 2008. It is located on a high desert site in Granada, Spain, which enjoys a high level of direct insolation – an average of 2,136 kWh / m2 / year. The mirror field — turbine infrastructure can yield a peak electricity generation capacity...[read more]

Ok, not all the time, but last weekend at 5:50am on Sunday morning (8th Nov) Spain set a new record, hitting 53.7% of its energy requirements being supplied by wind energy. As you can see from the graph above, the amount of electricity being supplied by wind, the light green portion of the graph, doesn’t go below 30% at any point in...[read more]

Today Recurrent Energy made some news with the announcement of our first 4.8MW of rooftop projects in Spain. These projects are the first projects to emerge from our efforts in Europe that were started last year. But what's really remarkable about these projects is how they were developed and what they indicate about the sizable...[read more]

Renewable Energy World has a report on a new Scottish wind farm - Europe's Largest Onshore Wind Farm Is Switched on in Scotland. Today, the final phase of Europe's largest onshore wind farm is being turned on in Scotland. The 322-megawatt (MW), 140-turbine Whitelee wind farm was built by ScottishPower Renewables, which is part of the...[read more]

I got this email from the Washington News Observer (sort of like TMZ except covering politics instead of celebrity news *lol*) and they send several YouTube clips about their exclusive interview with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) criticizing Obama's emulation of Spain's renewable energy industry. This topic seems to be getting a lot of...[read more]

The Spanish Island of Hierro may well become energy self sufficient over the next few years. In this video Gonzalo Piernovieja, Research and Development Director at the Canarias Technology Institute talks about the renewable energy project which in a few years time could generate 80% of the Island’s electricity requirements....[read more]

Spain has set a record this week by powering 29-40% of its electricity needs from wind energy.A huge 11,180 MW was generated on Thursday when high winds blew through north west Spain. When demand was lower early in the morning, wind energy supplied 40% of the country’s requirements whilst later on when demand rose, wind energy supplied...[read more]

Warming-driven desertification is spreading. Australia has gotten the most attention, but Spain is also turning into a desert. As Time reported: Spain is in the grip of its worst drought in a century as a result of climate change — this year’s total rainfall, for example, has been 40% lower than average for the equivalent period, and...[read more]