Following the commissioning of the system installed by Acciona Energía last February, the multinational has submitted a larger-scale project for public consultation: a solar park on agricultural land in Cizur that will multiply its current installed capacity more than fivefold. The investment, in this case, will be undertaken by NetOn Power, a platform specialising in industrial self-consumption.
GrafTech, which manufactures graphite electrodes, maintains an intensive electricity consumption linked to its production processes. This has led the company to pursue successive renewable generation facilities of its own, with the aim of reducing its dependence on the grid and advancing its decarbonisation strategy. Under this arrangement, NetOn Power will assume the investment required to develop the facility — around €4 million — while GrafTech will pay for the energy consumed once the park becomes operational.
The new park will occupy 34,421 square metres within an agricultural plot of nearly 11 hectares, located in Cendea de Cizur, just over two kilometres from the Ororbia industrial complex. The installation will include 14,222 bifacial photovoltaic modules and an installed capacity of 8,100 kilowatts, well above the 1.56 megawatts of the plant developed by Acciona Energía. The electricity generated will be routed to the plant via a 2.5-kilometre underground line and will operate, like the previous installation, under a self-consumption model with no surplus fed back into the grid.
ESTIMATED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
According to the company’s estimates, the park would generate 13,413 MWh a year, avoiding the emission of approximately 3,850 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent annually — a figure comparable to the effect of planting close to a thousand trees. This output would add to the 2 GWh a year already produced by the Acciona Energía installation. The works, still subject to the relevant permits, are expected to take around eight months.
The project also forms part of a wider period of expansion for the company in Navarra, where GrafTech is carrying out an €8.5 million investment to build a new 1,700 sqm facility at its Ororbia complex, already approved by the Government of Navarra.
Source: Navarra Capital