The Pinhal Novo Photovoltaic Park, inaugurated last Thursday, is part of a set of five solar power plants that make up the Garrido Complex. This particular park, with an investment of around 11 million euros and an installed capacity of 11.8 MW, consists of approximately 22,000 solar modules that will allow an annual production capacity of 24.3 GWh. The energy produced will be sufficient to supply electricity to about 19,000 people and, moreover, it will help reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere by 6,402 tons per year.
According to João Amaral, CTO & Country Manager of Voltalia Portugal, “This is one of the many projects that Voltalia is developing in Portugal. We want to contribute to the country’s energy transition, and this park is a good example of the type of projects that showcase our execution capability. It is with great satisfaction that we inaugurate it today, as this Park is one of the five that make up our new Portuguese cluster, the Garrido Complex, which at its full production capacity will, for example, produce enough energy to supply electricity to about 73,000 people. We want to have an increasingly strong presence in the national market and contribute to enabling our industry and other countries that want to come to Portugal to have access to electricity at competitive prices. We are a country with abundant sunlight; we have to take advantage of it and turn this attractive attribute into an asset in terms of energy, just as we already do with tourism.”
The green energy produced in this park is equivalent to the production of 195,000 mobile phones or to covering a distance of 42 million kilometers by a long-haul airplane or to more than 2,000 round-trip flights between Paris and Rio de Janeiro.
As for the Garrido Complex, of which Pinhal Novo is a part, it consists of four more parks: Alcochete, Antuzede, Vale Serrão, and Oliveira de Frades, representing an investment of 50 million euros, an installed capacity of 50.6 MW, and a total annual production capacity of 96.7 GWh, provided through over 94,000 solar modules. The energy produced in the Complex will be sufficient to supply electricity to about 73,000 people and will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by over 25,000 tons per year.
The energy produced in the complex is enough to power more than 777,000 mobile phones or to travel approximately 168 million kilometers by a long-haul airplane or even to carry out over 9,000 round-trip flights between Paris and Rio de Janeiro.
