The renewable energy group EDP Renewables (EDPR) has inaugurated a 45 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic park in the city of Konary, which is located in western Poland. This is the company’s first hybrid project in the country, since the plant works with both wind and solar energy, and the third globally.
The company has highlighted the innovative nature of the project at a European level for its use of hybridization. From EDPR they have explained that this combination of resources is a “shared use of the existing connection infrastructure by various sources of renewable energy with complementary operating profiles”.
The receiving station that the new Konary photovoltaic park will use will be the same one to which the Pawlowo wind farm, in central Poland, is connected for its operation. This is a 79.5 MW park that is also owned by EDPR.
20,000 families are supplied
The company has explained that the total connection power of the substation will not change, because the two technologies will produce energy in a complementary way, when its resource is more abundant, “maximizing” the renewable electricity that is supplied to the network. The operation will be supervised by algorithms.
To carry out this project, almost 70,000 photovoltaic panels have been installed on an area of more than 55 hectares, whose production will help supply energy to some 20,000 homes a year.
EDPR has highlighted that the Konary park will be the fourth largest photovoltaic park in Poland and will allow, over the at least 25 years of its useful life, the use of about 350,000 tons of coal and the emission of about 840,000 tons of CO2
“This photovoltaic park confirms the innovative and pioneering role of EDPR in the Polish market. At Konary, we demonstrate that the idea of also sharing the grid through complementary renewable energy technologies, which we are successfully implementing in Portugal and Spain, can unlock the potential connection of additional gigawatts of clean energy in Poland”, has signed Bartosz Fedurek, General Manager of EDPR in Poland.
Since 2008, when EDPR started its operations in Poland, the company has completed projects with a capacity of almost 900 MW.
