ACCIONA covers Google’s electricity consumption in Chile with solar power from the El Romero PV plant

ACCIONA Energía (Sarriguren, Spain) now covers all the electricity consumption of Google’s 

installations in Chile under a long-term supply contract signed by the two companies, with energy generated in its El Romero Solar photovoltaic (PV) plant.

This helps to achieve Google’s objective of supplying all its operations worldwide with 100% renewable energy by 2017.

Up to 80 MW of solar power per annum

ACCIONA’s solar power supplies to Google in Chile will continue until 2030, with an option for a five-year extension at the client’s discretion.

The contract covers the supply of up to 80 MW of solar power per annum through Chile’s main power grid, the Central Interconnected System (SIC), to which the photovoltaic plant and Google’s data center in Quilicura are both connected.

It is one of the 13 Google’s data centers worldwide and the only one located in the Southern hemisphere.

“We are proud to supply renewable energy to such an important customer as Google, a company strongly committed to renewables. And to do it from this plant, the biggest photovoltaic installation in Latin America and a key reference within the sector,” says ACCIONA Energía Chile CEO José Ignacio Escobar.

246 MW PV plant expected to produce 493 GWh of solar power annually

El Romero Solar is located in Vallenar in the Atacama Desert (around 645 kilometers north of Santiago), one of the areas of the world with the highest solar radiation. It gradually entered service towards the end of 2016 and is now in commercial operation after a record-breaking 13 months' construction period.

With a maximum capacity of 246 MW (196 MW rated power), the plant consists of 776,000 PV modules with a solar capture area of more than 1.5 million m².

The biggest photovoltaic plant built, owned and operated by ACCIONA to date represented an investment of around 343 million US dollars (314 million euros at current exchange rates).

Its average annual solar power production is estimated at 493 GWh, equivalent to the electricity demand of 240,000 Chilean homes.

 source:http://www.solarserver.com