Technology

Acciona Energy has grid connected its biomass plant in Briviesca (Burgos), its second straw-fired biomass plant and the first to use this type of fuel in the region of Castile and Leon. According to the company, the facility, in which the Castile and Leon Regional Government has a 15% stake, has represented an investment of €50 million and will create “100 permanent jobs (25 of them direct jobs in the plant), as well as the 300 created during the construction phases”.

Acciona reports that the 16-MW plant at Briviesca will burn approximately 102,000 metric tonnes of straw a year to produce around 128 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy, equivalent to the consumption of around 40,000 homes. The company also adds in a recent press release that “this will avoid the emission of 123,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from conventional coal-fired power stations, with a cleaning effect on the atmosphere equivalent to 6 million trees through the process of photosynthesis”.

Acciona Energy, which has carried out the development, engineering and construction of the plant and will also operate it under its ownership, also reveals that it has guaranteed the supply of raw material – mainly from Burgos and Palencia – “through medium- and long-term supply contracts with over 100 farmers and 38 companies based in Castile and Leon”. The company also reports in the press release that the plant has already sent its first kilowatts to the grid this week, “as part of a trial phase prior to full-scale production that will last three months”.

Plus Almazán, Valencia de Don Juan, Mohorte, Utiel...
The company already has one straw-fired biomass plant: a 25-MW facility at Sangüesa (Navarre). This facility started its trial phase in 2002 and now produces 200 million kilowatt-hours a year through the combustion of 160,000 metric tonnes of straw. It also has another two plants that generate electricity using biomass (forestry and timber waste), both of which have a capacity of 4 MW, in Soria and Cuenca.

Furthermore, the company has a 16-MW biomass plant “at a very advanced stage of construction”, located at Miajadas (Cáceres). The company says that this facility – which “like the Briviesca plant, is listed in the Register of Preliminary Allocation of Funds” – will enter service in the last quarter of this year. The Miajadas plant will burn herbaceous biomass, plus some forestry waste.

The company also has five other biomass plants currently pending planning permission: Almazán (16 MW) in Soria; Valencia de Don Juan (25 MW) in Leon; Alcazar de San Juan (Ciudad Real) and Mohorte (Cuenca), both with 16 MW, in Castile La Mancha; and Utiel (9 MW) in the region of Valencia. Almazán and Valencia de Don Juan – “currently at an advance stage of the administrative process” –will give the company a further 41 MW of electricity generation production from herbaceous biomass by the end of 2013/2014 and will require over half a million metric tonnes of agricultural waste to be mobilised.

For additional information:
www.acciona.es