In Germany, Europe’s biggest solar power plant, with a 605 megawatts (MW) capacity, went into operation. It is located on Lake Heiner in Witznitz, 25 km from Leipzig, and covers 500 hectares of the site of a former coal mine, plus an additional 150 hectares of adjacent land. The Witznitz Energy Park was built by Move On Energy for the insurance company Hansainvest Real Assets (a subsidiary of Germany’s Signal Iduna), which in turn has agreed to sell the electricity produced to Shell Energy Europe for the next 15 years.

The deal involves 600 MW of solar capacity because “buying solar power allows us to combine our strengths in energy trading and optimisation with our existing customer relationships to deliver more value with less emissions,” says Tom Summers, vice-president of Shell Energy Trading.

Shell’s customers include Microsoft, one of the most energy-intensive companies investing heavily in renewable energy. That is why the two companies have signed an energy capacity agreement, with the American company having secured 323 MW from Shell to power its global operations with clean energy by 2025. Proof that big tech cannot remain immune to the energy transition we are currently experiencing.

A project that changes the territory and the energy of the citizens

Activated at the end of March, the German solar power plant is divided into 10 sections with a total of 1.1 million TOPCon Tiger Neo photovoltaic modules from Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar. As mentioned, the plant has a total solar capacity of 650 MW but is currently limited to 605 MW. According to Move On Energy, which operates the park, the other 45 MW will be added over the summer, bringing the Witznitz Energy Park to full capacity. Functionally, the plant uses an electrical substation to feed solar energy into the high-voltage grid. It also has 3,500 inverters with additional software to manage reactive power and stabilise voltage levels.

The plant, which began construction in 2022 without government subsidies, will provide 0.6 TWh of renewable energy per year to meet the needs of the 620,000 residents of nearby Leipzig. The fact that this is one of the largest projects in Europe is also demonstrated by the measures already taken by Move One Energy to revitalise the surrounding area outside the plant: 13 kilometres of cycling and walking paths spread over 13 hectares of green space.

Europe’s largest solar power plants

Looking at the figures, the Witznitz Energy Park, with a capacity of 650 MW, is the largest solar power plant in Europe, displacing the Francisco Pizarro plant built by the Spanish electricity company Iberdrola in the Extremadura region in the south-east of the country. Iberdrola’s plant, which started operation in 2022, has a solar capacity of 590 MW, while the current project by Avintia Energía, the renewable energy division of the Iberian group Avintia, is to build an 850 MW plant in the centre-south of Spain. However, a cluster of 17 plants will generate the total capacity.

However, Iberdrola is set to regain the lead on the European side thanks to the Fernando Pessoa project, a 1.2 GW solar plant to be built in Santiago do Cacém, 150 km from Lisbon. Once operational in 2025 (if all goes well), the plant will create 2,500 jobs in the region and produce enough renewable energy to meet the annual needs of 430,000 households, making it the fifth-largest photovoltaic plant in the world.