José María Barreda, President of the Castilla-La Mancha regional government, and Ignacio Galán, Chairman of Iberdrola Renovables, have opened a solar thermal power plant in Puertollano (Ciudad Real).

It is the first solar electric thermal plant to begin working in Castilla-La Mancha.

The Puertollano solar thermal power plant, with an installed capacity of 50 megawatts (MW), is 90 percent-owned by Iberdrola Renovables and 10 percent by IDAE (Spanish Institute for Energy Diversification and Savings). The total investment in the new plant has been about €200 million.

The plant, for which the construction work started in March 2007, will produce an estimated more than 100 million kWh per year.

The facility has a solar collection area of nearly 290,000 m2, occupies approximately 150 hectares and consists of 352 parabolic-cylinder collectors, fitted with 120,000 parabolic mirrors and 13,000 absorber tubes.