State-owned Sociedad Estatal de Aguas de las Cuencas Mediterranean áneas (Akuamed) will soon launch a tender for a solar desalination project in Spain.
Spain's cabinet has approved a 2.19 billion Euro ($2.38 billion) investment plan. The strategy was first proposed by the Ministry of Ecological Transformation and population challenges and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and food to combat drought and strengthen water resources. These include building desalination powered by solar power plants, supporting the reuse of urban water, and reducing the cost of affected agricultural farms, and reducing pressure on the aquifers that supply the Doñana National Park.
Acuamed, the state-owned company, was authorised to bid for new desalination and photovoltaic solar parks and allocated a $600m budget. Acuamed will develop agreements to stimulate investment in photovoltaic parks and set maximum selling prices for desalinated water. Spanish developers have implemented projects using photovoltaic power to desalination water shortages. Scientists from the universities of Lyon and Laguna have created a model and applied it to Canary Islands. The model calculates the parameters of a hybrid wind and photovoltaics power plant that will support desalination facilities that supply fresh water until the end of its life cycle. In the Andalucía, Colombia, the Agua + S Circular Economy project aims to get desalinated water from the sea using renewable energy generated by floating photovoltaic plants in the reservoir. Spanish companies, such as Abengoa and Ayesa, have built the world's largest reverse osmosis desalination in Saudi Arabia, which began operating in December to meet the water needs of about 3m people. In Chile, Acciona, a Spanish company, provides renewable electricity to a desalination in the Atacama Desert region, providing water to populations in four cities.