How Does Spain Use Solar Energy

Spain is one of the most attractive countries for the development of solar energy, as is the European country with the greatest amount of sunshine. The Spanish government has committed to produce 12% of renewable energy by 2010, and to install 400 megawatts (MW) of power using solar power. Spain is the fourth country in the world in solar energy technologies exporting 80% of it to Germany.

Through a ministerial decision in March 2004, the Spanish government removed economic barriers to the connection of renewable energy to the electricity grid. Royal Decree 436/2004 equalizes the conditions for large-scale production of solar, thermal and photovoltaic energy and guarantees feed-in sale tariffs.
On June 1st, 2007 came into force the Royal Decree 661/2007 of May 25th, which regulates the production of electrical energy as a special regime, which maintains a system similar to those established by Royal Decree 436 / 2004, March 12th, in which the operator can choose to sell its energy under a regulated rate, unique for all programming periods, or sell the energy directly in the daily market or through a bilateral contract receiving in this case the agreed price plus a premium. In the latter case, some new technologies were introduced, lower and upper limits for the amount of hours of daily market price plus a premium of reference, so that the premium paid on an hourly basis, may be limited depending of these values. The new system protects the developer when the revenue from the market price is too low, and eliminates the premium when the market price is high enough to ensure coverage of their costs by eliminating irrationalities in the retribution of technologies, whose costs are not directly linked to oil prices in the international markets

Spain is one of the countries along with Germany, Italy, UK, Netherlands and Sweden that could meet the long term, between 10 and 60 percent of its electricity demand, through the introduction of solar photovoltaic panels, according to estimates made today by the European Commission at the conference on renewable energy held in the Swedish city of Uppsala. The president of the commission proposed to expand the research “to use the sun and the earth as energy sources,” and introduced the draft H-Alpha Solar and PROCIS. In the first case, researchers from France, Portugal and the Netherlands have opted for this new technology from the manufacturing of silicon solar energy equipment, with a good result both in cost and in efficiency.

The EU executive said that due to rising oil prices, environmental challenges and changing of the law there is an “urgent” need to develop alternatives to replace fossil fuels with renewable options. Also stated that the biomass, agricultural waste and organic debris are the only renewable energy sources can supply large-scale, liquid fuel for transportation and this in an industry that uses 97 percent oil, most of which is imported.

“We should do the impossible to develop new and renewable sources of energy to reduce our dependence on foreign sources, protecting our environment,” said European Commissioner for Development Louis Michel. “We must find solutions to convert the recent research results into profitable and appropriate alternatives for everyday use.”

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