Having a clean, renewable and cheaper electric system with solar energy is already a reality

Solar energy without premiums is already a reality

Solar energy is clean, local, generates a lot of employment, it is easy and quick to install, simple to maintain but it is expensive. That was the mantra that solar energy boosters have had to face over the years, and it seemed that they had to resign themselves to maintaining dependence on energy sources More dirty, but apparently cheaper. Solar photovoltaic technology has been available for a long time, but it needed public support to commercialize. And the premiums have been the most efficient support system.

However, solar energy is traveling its learning curve much faster than anyone had anticipated. And consequently, new solar plants have increasingly needed less support. Today a solar panel costs about 80% less than just five years ago to give the same energy. And the costs are expected to continue falling by another 50% until 2020.

But we no longer have to wait to get solar energy for less than the cost of dirty energy. Solar energy has already reached a historical goal : at the end of 2013, for the first time, a solar power plant that sells its electricity at the market price was connected to the grid, that is, obtaining the same remuneration as any conventional power plant. No subsidies, no premiums.

The plant in question, developed by the company Enerpro, is in the province of Seville, on a 6-hectare estate. With structures that follow the sun on an axis, it already has a megawatt connected to the network, and this year the remaining phases will continue to be built until the 2.5 MW of the project is completed. The company plans to connect 12 MW in different plants this year, and start with large 300 MW plants next year. All this at "pool" prices, that is, selling electricity in the wholesale electricity market, as do the rest of conventional electricity producers, since according to the company, the total cost of the electricity they will produce, including the investment and operation and maintenance, is the lowest of all that market.

Enerpro has been the first, but it is not the only one. Last year, Red Eléctrica de España had received about 200 requests to connect more than 40, 000 MW of photovoltaic plants to the network. The barrier to connect them is no longer economic but administrative, since those who invest in them consider that the electricity they will produce can compete in the market and be profitable without any support.

How to interpret this new reality? Of course, not as the Government is doing, retroactively cutting back the supports to those who invested in solar plants in past years, when technology was more expensive and supports were necessary. Thanks to those who invested in solar energy in these conditions, and thanks to the support system that we all cost, we have become competitive solar energy in such a short time.

To assess what this means you have to see the figures in context. 2013 ended with 4, 681 MW of photovoltaic solar power installed in Spain, which supplied 3.2% of the electricity demand. If all the solar plants that have requested to connect do so, we could expect that the available photovoltaic solar electricity would be multiplied by ten, which would be equivalent to almost a third of the total demand. If we take into account that renewables already supplied 42.4% of the peninsular electricity demand last year, it is clear that reaching a clean and renewable electrical system is at hand.

If what is questioned is the technical feasibility, the answer also gives us the reality: the Spanish electricity system has been able to integrate up to 67% of electricity from variable sources, as we could see with the wind record reached on the day of Christmas, something unthinkable recently, and all without blackouts or anything like that.

This can only be stopped by dark interests. But those interests exist and are very strong, both in the large electric companies and in the Spanish Government.

José Luis García Ortega, Head of the Research and Advocacy Area and the Greenpeace Climate and Energy Change Area

Having a clean, renewable and cheaper electric system with solar energy is already a reality