The patchwork plains of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain, were once known for their windmills.

But now it is wind turbines, their modern-day equivalent, which are much more visible on the region’s skyline.

The 28 vast turbines of the Sierra del Romeral windfarm, perched on hills not far from the historic city of Toledo, look out over this landscape.

Operated by Spanish firm Iberdrola, they are part of a trend that has accelerated Spain’s renewable energy output over the past half-decade, making the country a major presence in the industry.

Spain’s total wind generation capacity, its prime renewable source in recent years, has doubled since 2008. Solar energy capacity, meanwhile, has increased by a factor of eight over the same period.

This makes Spain the EU member state with the second-largest renewable energy infrastructure, after Sweden in first place.

Earlier this year, Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, described his country as “a driving force of the energy transition on a global scale”.

The boom began soon after the arrival of a new government under Mr Sánchez in 2018, with the removal of regulatory obstacles, and the introduction of subsidies for renewable installation. The pandemic further accelerated the trend on a domestic level.

“The impact of Covid was very positive for our sector,” says José Donoso, chief executive of UNEF, the Spanish Photovoltaic Association, which represents the solar panel sector. “People saved money, took time to think about what to do with it, and many of them decided that it was better invested on their roof than in their bank.”

Meanwhile, the government introduced ambitious new targets, including covering 81% of Spain’s electricity needs with renewables by 2030.

However, behind this success story, there are concerns within the electricity industry caused by an imbalance between supply and demand with, at times, a surplus of electricity.

Even though the Spanish economy has bounced back strongly from the trauma of the Covid pandemic, and is growing faster than all of the bloc’s other big economies, electricity consumption has been dropping in recent years.

Last year, demand for electricity was even below that seen in the pandemic year 2020, and the lowest since 2003.

“What we saw until 2005 was that when GDP increased, demand for electricity increased more than GDP,” says Miguel de la Torre Rodríguez, head of system development at Red Eléctrica (REE), the company that operates Spain’s national grid.

More recently, he says, “we’ve seen that demand has increased less than GDP. What we’re seeing is a decoupling of energy intensity from the economy”.

There are several reasons for the recent drop in demand. They include the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which caused businesses and homes across Europe to cut back on usage.

Also, energy efficiency has improved and become more commonplace.

The increased usage of renewable energy has also contributed to the reduction in demand for electricity from the national grid.

Mr Rodríguez says that during daylight hours, when solar energy output is particularly strong, the supply-demand balance can be pushed out of kilter, having an impact on prices.

“Since the power system always has to have an equilibrium – demand has to equal generation – that has meant there has been excess generation during those hours,” he says.

“That has driven prices down, especially during certain hours, when the prices have been zero or even negative.”

While such low prices are welcome for consumers, they are potentially a problem when it comes to attracting investment to the industry.

“This can make it more difficult for investors to increase their investment in new electricity based on renewable energies,” says Sara Pizzinato, a renewable energy expert at Greenpeace Spain.

“That can be a bottleneck for the energy transition.”

Concerns about Spain having an excess of electricity have led to discussion of the need to accelerate the “electrification” of the economy, which involves moving it away from fossil fuels. The Sánchez government has set a target of making 34% of the economy reliant on electricity by 2030.

“This process is going slowly, and we need to accelerate it,” says UNEF’s José Donoso.

"Electricity is the cheapest and most competitive way to produce clean energy.

“We need facilities that use electricity in place of fossil fuels.”

Shifting to a total reliance on electricity is seen as unrealistic, as some important sectors like chemicals and metals will find the transition difficult.

However, Mr Donoso and others see plenty of scope for swifter electrification. For example, Spain is trailing many of its European neighbours when it comes to the installation of heat pumps in homes, and the use of electric cars, which only make up around 6% of vehicles on the road.

Ms Pizzinato agrees that electrification is crucial, but says there are other ways of tackling the supply-demand quandary, including phasing out the use of nuclear plants more quickly, and increasing energy storage capability.

She says: “We need to engage more people and more industries in demand-side management, to make sure the flexibility needed in the system is out there to make generation and demand match better during the day and during the night.”

  • Fugtig Fisk
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    6 months ago

    Its only a problem because we dont yet have a solution to it. In realitty this is a really good thing! We just need a way to store or make use of the excess energy

    • then_three_more@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I’d argue it’s not even that we don’t have a solution.

      It’s we need to implement the solution. There’s absolutely tonnes to energy storage solutions ( batteries, storing it as heat, storing it as potential energy) that would work well on grid scale, just need to have their implementation catch up with generation capacity.

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        6 months ago

        True! Also once storage becomes feasible, turbine prices will soar! So i guess making more than we need now, is a good investment (assuming lobbying does not get in the way of energy storing)

      • Iceblade@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The existing solution isn’t economical, mostly due to grid costs. If you want it, it’ll have to come from the tax payers pocket, which means it has to compete with stuff like healthcare.

        • then_three_more@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I think if the issues with russian gas have shown us anything it’s that energy security should be treated as being much more important than it has in the past. So maybe it should come from tax payers money and be thought of as part of a broad national defence strategy.

      • TheOakTree@beehaw.org
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        6 months ago

        Cool to see this come up! I recently had to write a (mock) proposal regarding different efforts to store excess green energy and I had a blast reading about gravity batteries and pumped hydro. Hopefully, these projects come along sooner than later, as widespread adoption will take much longer than the first several implementations.

        Another neat tidbit I learned while researching pumped hydro is that hydroelectric dams actually use the remaining inertia of the spinning generators to pump water back up the dams, which is much like the idea of regenerative braking in EVs.

        • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          Another neat tidbit I learned while researching pumped hydro is that hydroelectric dams actually use the remaining inertia of the spinning generators to pump water back up the dams, which is much like the idea of regenerative braking in EVs

          Some of them. Others, like the Kidston one use solar.

          When I was first learning about this stuff, I (very incorrectly) thought that the purpose of the battery was to generate (rather than store) energy, so I had a hard time wrapping my head around how they could actually work. The idea, however, is that you have your main source of green energy, and when the grid can’t take more energy, you use the excess to pump the water or lift the weight. Then, when the grid needs power you release your weight/water. In this regard, it builds capacity and stability of a green grid.

      • Kowowow@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Or even turning old coal powered plants into thermal battery generators that get heated up with green electricity then generate their own through steam

        • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          Yeah, we can use whatever as long as it holds the energy without loss. A suspended load has zero loss - so does a bunch of water behind a dam.

          I don’t see how thermal could do that though.

          • Kowowow@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            They use graphite and it’s not perfect but being able to repurpose something can be a lot more environmentally friendly plus it wouldn’t be a huge change for people who maintain thier turbines

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Zero loss is not necessary in practice. Those coal plant upgrade kits use graphite blocks with embedded pipes and heating elements wrapped in absolutely bonkers isolation, all in a shipping container. Produce 700C steam. Self-discharge comparable to chemical batteries.

            If you want scalable zero-loss storage because you want to store energy on a seasonal scale, or for long-distance transportation, the best solution should be to eat some conversion loss in the beginning. Ammonia, ethanol, suchlike, it’d be nice to have something that’s not toxic but, well.

            Oh: Zinc. People have been trying to make rechargeable zinc batteries for ages but it’s just hard but there’s another solution: Forego the recharging part and just throw the resultant zinc oxide back into an industrial refinery process. Works with pretty much any metal but zinc is convenient and we already have tons of infrastructure. To make the stuff zero-loss simply make sure to keep the zinc away from oxygen… which is easy as zinc oxide forms a protective coat so even though it oxidises quite quickly it also quickly stops doing that. Just like aluminium.

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        6 months ago

        I had this discussion about a similar issue here in Denmark. The country is very fast flat so gravity is not really an option. In Spain though id expect this should be a really good option!

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I’m no hydro specialist but my understanding is that in the Alps/Pyrénées, the hydro capacity is essentially maxed out because any additional projects will be denied on environmental grounds (flooding valleys is, as it turns out, not amazing for the environment). Maybe there’s some pairs of existing artificial lakes that could act as batteries, IDK. But I wouldn’t expect this to magically solve every issue.

          In Belgium we have one such installation thanks to a fortuitous topological quirk, but no plans for more. Still, 10 GWh is not nothing and already helping a lot to absorb renewable fluctuations.

          • Fugtig Fisk
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            6 months ago

            Ok hear me out here then. Instead of gravity storange we wind big balloons down into the ocean and let them slowly rise to the surface unwinding a generator.

            But maybe pressure will crush them.

            Can we maybe just compress air and generate energy while releasing the pressure?

            • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Anything to do with seawater needs to deal with corrosion (e.g. offshore wind/tide generation). Also intuition tells me the balloons would be waaay bigger than reasonable.

              Compressed air I assume is possible, as are many many other things (gravity, heat, springs, etc.). The question is which is cheaper and grid-scale; a 1 GWh pressure vessel would certainly be a sight to behold.

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                6 months ago

                Also I’d personally rather live next to a wind turbine than a 1 GWh pressure vessel!

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                We could, like, dude, dude!, we could turn the earth into a flywheel.

        • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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          6 months ago

          There are lots of other potential (ha!) solutions for mechanical energy storage, like this one, which uses specially constructed towers to lift heavy weights.

          Lots of other interesting options listed on that wiki article as well!

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            6 months ago

            I can’t see why new buildings can’t function in a similar way as these gravitational blocks. Or even whole housing blocks on poles. It should be feasible. Maybe not economical yet

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            The whole of Jutland is basically one big aquifer. The good news is that Sweden and Norway are nearby, there’s already plenty of HVDC capacity to send Danish and Schleswig-Holstein wind into their hydro storage. Which is also the bad news the capacity is basically tapped out.