Harnessing the Alentejan Sun

“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” - Pres. Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

The timing is of course, merely coincidental, but as Pres. Obama was inspiring not just the American nation but the entire world to ‘think green’,  we are excited to report that we are now connected! We are now micro-producers, able to produce and sell our own electricity on a small scale to the grid. Our photovoltaic power plant is now hooked up and producing 7.36 kWh green energy or an annual estimate of 14.400 kWh, corresponding to approx. 16% of our annual electric consumption of the winery.

Our 2 trackers each have a surface of 30m²  and contains polycrystalline silicon modules with a capacity of 180 Wp. Like the sunflowers so common in Alentejo, they are equipped with light sensors enabling them to follow the sun with an azimuthal rotation (2 axis). This sun tracking system, increases efficiency by up to 25% over the fixed modules.  Our aim is to be totally energy self sufficient which would require a solar power station 8 times our current installation, but unfortunately we are restricted by current Portuguese legislation which limits micro production of green energy to the grid to 5.7 kW, and no more than 50% of our consumption power.

This is not our first investment in solar energy at the winery, as earlier last year we installed 48 solar panels on top of our southern facing roof, to supply all the heating needs of the winery. These solar collector panels have a minimum capacity of about 45 kW.

This small step towards green energy in the Alentejo, although newsworthy in itself, as the first Portuguese winery with a solar power plant, was dwarfed by another gigantic leap in the same direction, in our very own backyard! Ironically, just as we were hooking up to produce our first solar energy, the world’s biggest photovoltaic power plant also got connected to the grid. Now owned by the Spanish construction company Acciona, this enormous solar park covers a total area of 250 hectares, with over 2,500 trackers, and is located 50 kms to our east, in Amareleja, near Moura, Alentejo, close to the Spanish border.The area is a natural choice for such a large scale solar farm, set up on a large empty plain, dry and sunny most of the year, and sparsely populated with oak trees and black pigs. Geographically, it lies just next to another recently constructed man-made mammoth, Europe’s largest man made lake, the Alqueva Dam. Alentejo’s big empty spaces are slowly being put to use….