An Israeli multinational is planning a lithium battery electricity storage facility in Abizanda.

An Israeli multinational is planning a lithium battery electricity storage facility in Abizanda.

Enlight Energy contacts the town council and the Government of Aragon to build a four-hectare complex of bus-sized batteries to accumulate renewable energy surpluses to be fed into the grid during the daily phases of low production The Israeli multinational Enlight Energy plans to install in Abizanda (Sobrarbe) a four-hectare complex of lithium batteries the size of a truck to store surplus electricity from renewable sources to feed it into the grid during the daily phases of low production, the nighttime for photovoltaics and the quiet phases for wind power. The company has already contacted the City Council of Abizanda and the Ministries of Economy and Environment of the Government of Aragon, the first of which manages the competences in the area of energy while the second is in charge of the Aragonese Institute of Environmental Management (INAGA), the body on which depends the approval of the impacts to be generated. The contacts do not include the area of Urban Planning, which depends on the Ministry of Development, since the degree of intervention of that department, like that of the town councils, depends in initiatives of this magnitude on whether or not Economy and the presidency can classify the initiative as a Project of General Interest of Aragon (PIGA), which considerably reduces the decision-making capacity of the former. The project has generated concern in the area basically due to two aspects: the risk of fire in a mid-mountain area with a large presence of pine and kermes oak trees, and also the risk of leaks from the lithium trays of the batteries that could contaminate the land and aquifers in the area or reach the nearby Cinca river and the Mediano reservoir. Water to cool batteries operating at more than 90º
The project consists of the installation of huge lithium batteries, similar to the size of a long construction shed or a truck ‘boat’, with a total power of 49 Mw (megawatts), which would be one meter apart from each other over an area of four hectares (40,000 square meters). The batteries, which would operate alternately so that two adjacent batteries do not charge or discharge electricity at the same time, require a significant amount of water for cooling, since their operating temperature exceeds 90º according to the manufacturer, the U.S. company Sungrow. The medium-voltage evacuation line is planned parallel to the high-voltage line that evacuates electricity from the Mediano power plant, managed by Acciona. It is striking how such a complex, of which there is no precedent in Europe, is projected less than forty kilometers in a straight line from Monzón, where another foreign company, in this case the local subsidiary of a company based in Singapore, is processing permits to explore the existence of a hydrogen pocket in the Cinca alluvial. And it is also striking the attraction that Aragon is generating for technology companies whose facilities require high inputs of water for cooling, an aspect in which the Abizanda electric warehouse coincides with the server farms of Amazon and Microsoft. A multinational with the presence of the owners of BlackRock
The town council is negotiating with the company the location of the complex in an area of communal woodland.

“That is already a filter. Whether it is accepted or not has to be voted on in an assembly of the community of goods of the mount,” explains the mayor, Javier Labat Latorre, who assures that “we will see how the location of the project is decided, which is not something that I will decide as mayor. It will be decided by the neighbors”. “We are going to see the issue, which is a municipality project,” he points out, which can have a high economic impact on the municipal coffers by way of licenses and taxes, although these are significantly reduced when a PIGA is applied. Labat Latorre assures that the battery complex, whose location would be a pasture area that had been occupying the holm oaks in a natural way and that later was ploughed, would not be visible from the town. According to him, the council proposes that the facilities could include a transformer connected to the energy community formally constituted in the municipality or, also, to condition the project to some type of guarantee or guarantee that the batteries would be dismantled once they are out of use. Enlight Energy, whose plans are to start operating within a year, is an Israeli company in the energy sector in which the State has a stake and in which US investment funds such as Invesco, MCSI or Vanguard, one of the main owners of BlackRock, have a presence. It has been contacted by this media but, for the moment, no response has been received. It moves investments worth 26,000 million euros, and in recent years has been buying wind farms and photovoltaic parks in various areas of Spain.
Source:
https://www.eldiario.es/aragon/economia/multinacional-israeli-proyecta-almacen-electricidad-baterias-litio-abizanda_1_10941294.html