Europe's largest floating solar farm
By merging sun and water, Portugal’s showing how to power homes cheaply and cleanly without disrupting the landscape.
INNOVATION
The Alqueva Floating Solar Plant is a solar power project on the Alqueva reservoir in southern Portugal, run by EDP (Energias de Portugal). It’s built on the largest artificial lake in Western Europe and uses the existing hydroelectric dam to create a hybrid energy system.
How Does It Work?
The plant consists of floating solar panels placed on the water. These panels generate electricity, which is then stored or sent to the grid. The system also connects with an existing hydropower plant, improving efficiency.
The first phase of the Alqueva project, inaugurated on July 15, 2022, features an installed capacity of 5 megawatts (MW). This phase includes approximately 12,000 photovoltaic panels spread across a floating platform covering 4 hectares—equivalent to about 0.016% of the reservoir’s total surface area.
The platform, roughly the size of four soccer fields, produces around 7.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity annually, enough to supply over 30% of the households in the Portel and Moura region, or approximately 1,500 to 2,000 families depending on varying consumption estimates.
The plant integrates solar power with the existing Alqueva hydroelectric dam, utilizing a single grid connection point. This hybrid model combines dispatchable (hydroelectric) and non-dispatchable (solar) energy sources, optimizing resource use and grid stability.
