State-owned company Sociedad Estatal de Aguas de las Cuencas Mediterráneas (Acuamed) will soon launch tenders for solar-powered desalination projects in Spain.
The Spanish cabinet has approved a €2.19 billion ($2.38 billion) investment plan. The strategy was originally proposed by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to combat drought and enhance water resources.
The measures include constructing desalination plants powered by solar plants, supporting urban water reuse, reducing fees for affected agricultural farms, and alleviating pressure on aquifers supplying the Doñana National Park.
The government authorized the state-owned company Acuamed to initiate tenders for new desalination plants coupled with photovoltaic solar parks, allocating a budget of €600 million. Acuamed will establish agreements to incentivize investment in photovoltaic parks and set a maximum sale price for desalinated water.
Spanish developers have already implemented projects utilizing photovoltaics to address water scarcity through desalination plants.
Scientists from the University of León and La Laguna have created a model, applied in the Canary Islands, that calculates parameters for a hybrid wind and solar photovoltaic power plant supporting a desalination facility capable of supplying a population until the plant's end of life.
In Andalusia, the Agua+S circular economy project aims to obtain desalinated water from the sea using renewable energy generated by floating photovoltaic plants in reservoirs.
Spanish companies such as Abengoa and Ayesa have constructed the world's largest reverse osmosis desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, operational since last December, serving the water needs of approximately 3,000,000 people.
In Chile, Acciona, a Spanish company, supplies renewable electricity to a desalination plant in the Atacama region, catering to the human consumption of four municipalities.
