The largest urban solar plant in Spain will be in Valencia. Specifically, about his cemetery

Valencia will have the largest urban solar plant in Spain. More than 6,500 solar panels that will be installed from next month and with which they hope to obtain a power of 2.8 megawatts. A large energy project for public self-consumption with which they hope to obtain enough to support more than a thousand homes. And it will be built in a most peculiar place.

“Requiem In Power”. The Valencia City Council has put out to tender the RIP project, as this initiative is known. The name comes because these solar panels will be installed on top of the roofs of the cemetery niches. In total, the project is expected to cost about four million euros and the tender consists of five lots, for the different municipal cemeteries of Valencia.

The General Cemetery will place some 4,500 plaques. The rest, up to 6,628 plaques, will be distributed among the cemeteries of Cabanyal (1,437), Campanar (375), Benimàmet (259) and Grao (146). as described El Diario.esthe first phase will cost three million euros, it already has the approval of the Archbishopric and the panels will be installed on section 19 of the General Cemetery.

Anem to build the largest public and urban photovoltaic plant in l’Estat.

The Requiem In Power (RIP) project will dispose of 7,000 solar panels at the municipal cemeteries ⛪️☀️

2.8 megawatts of renewable energy!⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️#Requieminpower pic.twitter.com/2qpIW7yhkU

– Alejandro Ramon (@_alejandroramon) December 22, 2021

The roof of the niches is perfect for solar panels. The mayor of the city, Joan Ribó, explained why they have chosen this location: “cities do not usually have as much space as for an installation of this type, but we detected an opportunity for space in the ceiling of the niches, which now they do not have no use, and yet they have a good orientation to install solar panels”.

Taking the idea of ​​Barcelona and Malaga to the next level. The first municipality in Spain to install solar panels on cemeteries was Santa Coloma de Gramanet, in the province of Barcelona. It was in 2008 and since then it has been replicated in other cities such as the Catalan capital itself or Malaga.

On the San Gabriel cemetery in Malaga there are solar panels for a power of almost 600,000 kilowatts. By comparison, the Valencia project will be almost five times larger.

Spain has a lot of room for improvement in self-consumption and solar energy. Spain is the European country with the greatest potential for solar energy, with solar irradiation between 1,600 kW/m2 and 1,950 kW/m2. What happens is that we still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to installing solar panels. Added to this is a problem of space. Where there is a lot of space, few people live. And in the cities there is not so much space. This is where the municipal cemeteries initiative comes in.

City councils have the possibility of taking advantage of public buildings for the installation of photovoltaic panels. And cemeteries have turned out to be the public facilities with the most space for this type of project. Alejandro Ramón, Councilor for Agriculture and Climate Emergency, has defined it as “the largest public and urban photovoltaic plant in the entire State”. But surely this idea will expand in the coming years throughout Spain.

Image | Funespaña