The Spanish ministry for the ecological transition has awarded around EUR 28 million (USD 30.7m) in state aid to incentivise the installation of renewables and energy storage systems in the Balearic Islands.
The funding will be distributed through the ministry’s implementing agency, the Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving (IDAE), which selected 15 projects in a dedicated tendering procedure. These projects will add 49.625 MW of installed solar photovoltaic capacity and about 53.50 MWh of energy storage to three of the Balearic Islands, the ministry said in a press release on Friday.
Aiming to enhance grid security in the archipelago, IDAE selected 14 solar-plus-storage projects and one storage project that will be connected to an existing 5.5-MW solar farm.
Most of these projects plan to utilise crowdfunding campaigns to involve citizens in the initiatives. According to the ministry, the tendering was also aimed at facilitating the introduction of smaller players to the electricity market, allowing four projects of less than 1 MW of generation capacity and five projects of less than 5 MW to secure the state support.
The funds and the capacity will be distributed as follows:
| ISLAND: | ALLOCATED FUNDS: | NUMBER OF PROJECTS: | SOLAR CAPACITY: | ENERGY STORAGE CAPACITY: |
| Mallorca | EUR 22.21m | 9 | 45.20 MW | 38.45 MWh |
| Ibiza | EUR 1.31m | 4 | 2.04 MW | 1.76 MWh |
| Menorca | EUR 1.36m | 1 | 2.385 MW | 2.14 MWh |
| EUR 3.161m | 1 | — | 11.18 MWh |
The state aid, sourced from Spain’s EU-funded Covid recovery instrument, will help cover between 40% and 65% of the planned investment in these projects, the ministry added.
The latest allocation follows the recently finalised tender for renewable energy project proposals for the Canary Islands.
(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.098)