Gran Canaria launches sports arena battery tender for $1.5 million

The General Directorate of the Gran Canaria Island Energy Council, in Spain, is tendering a EUR 1,463,757.30 ($1.53 million) contract to install a 1 MW/1.73 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) to maximize savings from a solar array at the Gran Canaria Arena sports hall.
The 770 kW solar array, inaugurated in December 2023, generates 1,412 MWh/year, of which 929 MWh are consumed on site and 483 MWh are fed into the grid. The government of the Canary Islands wants to install an energy storage and load management system as many sporting events occur during low hours of solar generation.
The planned BESS will occupy around 30 m2 of a 1,150 m2 parking area and is expected to supply the 1.5 MWh of storage capacity necessary to “green” a two-hour sporting event. The tender documents indicate such events require 1 MWh to power air conditioning and 500 kWh for other, general services.
Two 500 kW/864 kWh Powercube M2A-180 Schneider Electric lithium ferro-phosphate batteries will be installed in a compact, prefabricated concrete building featuring a thermally insulated energy storage system area and a ventilated, filtered space for the power transformation and control equipment.
The Power Control System (PCS), or storage inverter, comprises two Sinexcel three-phase, 500 kW, hybrid PWS1-500KTL-EX8M units. The inverter comprises a two-body frame containing the PCS on one side and a rack area of insulated-gate bipolar transistor technology converters on the other, to modulate output power.
The BESS will also have a 380 V/400 V isolation transformer.
The project is being co-financed by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU fund and is part of Spain’s post-Covid Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The BESS is part of a grant program for clean electricity generation facilities on Spain’s islands and received a €685,152 subsidy from Spanish government body the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving.
The deadline for bids for the BESS installation contract is on Feb. 12, 2025.
From pv magazine España.