Utility and power firm Naturgy has started building its first BESS projects in Spain, at a ten-site portfolio in Almeria and the Canary Islands.
The company announced groundbreaking on the first four of a ten-site portfolio yesterday (16 October), saying the whole portfolio will total 160MW of power and 342MWh of energy storage capacity, an average duration of 2.13 hours.
The projects will be combined with four solar PV systems. The first battery energy storage systems (BESS) are being added to the Tabernas I and II PV plants in the province of Almería, and the El Escobar and Piletas I in Las Palmas (Canary Islands).
Naturgy plans to have launched construction on all ten by 2026, nine of which are hybridised with PV with one standalone project in Vigo (Pontevedra). It didn’t reveal the size of the four initial projects, which will come online in 2026.
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The lithium-ion BESS will reinforce the electricity market in Spain and help to integrate more intermittent renewable energy, and Naturgy is investing €80 million (US$94 million) in them.
The projects are recipients of funding under Spain’s energy storage capex support scheme funded by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience framework, which is funding up to 3.5GWh of projects.
Naturgy’s peer Galp similarly announced the start of construction on BESS projects in Spain (and Portugal) earlier this year, as did Iberdrola in August.
Spain aims to be 81% powered by renewables by 2030, according to the country’s National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP), and energy storage will be key to helping to maintain system reliability and dampen price volatility. The government forecasts that 22.5GW of BESS will be needed by that date.
Spain and Portugal suffered a near country-wide blackout in April this year, which commentators have suggested could have been better mitigated with more grid-supporting and grid-forming technologies, including energy storage.
Naturgy is based in Spain but its first major large-scale activity was in Australia, bringing online the 128MW Cunderdin hybrid solar PV and 55MW/220MWh BESS in Western Australia in early 2025.
