The Institut Català de Finances (ICF) has financed the Catalan energy group Electra Caldense Grup, through its subsidiary Delta Renovables, with a total of €4 million to launch two solar parks in Gallifa (Vallès Occidental) and Caldes de Montbui (Vallès Oriental).

The facilities will have a combined peak capacity of 8.2 MWp, equivalent to the annual consumption of nearly 3,500 households. Specifically, the Gallifa photovoltaic plant will have 4.4 MWp and the Caldes de Montbui plant, 3.8 MWp.

Both projects adopt complementary business models and represent a step forward in the group's strategy of investing in renewable energy infrastructure, aimed at driving its growth and diversifying its activity.

The Gallifa park, on the one hand, will incorporate a battery storage system, a key technology for ensuring the stability of the electricity grid, managing the intermittency of renewables and optimising the use of the energy generated.

On the other hand, the Caldes de Montbui plant will adopt a hybrid model: part of the electricity will be sold directly to local companies and residents through self-consumption, while the rest will be fed into the grid to be sold on the general electricity market.

The financing from the public development bank comes through an ICF EcoVerda loan, which has a guarantee from the European Investment Fund (EIF), with the support of the European Union through the InvestEU programme, aimed at improving access to financing on favourable terms for sustainable investments in Catalonia, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable mobility or water-saving projects, among others.

“The public development bank exists precisely for this: to offer companies the long-term financing they need to accelerate their sustainable and energy transition projects. The fact that a group with more than a century of history is firmly committed to renewables shows that the green transition is also built on strong roots in the territory,” said ICF CEO Vanessa Servera.

“The market currently penalises photovoltaic generation while the rollout of grid storage systems is awaited. Even so, these plants are essential to advancing the energy transition, and ICF's support in financing these projects is very important,” said Oriol Xalabarder, CEO of Electra Caldense Grup.

“In addition to generating renewable energy, the projects are geared towards shared self-consumption, which we will market under the Elecsum e-sharing brand. In this way, we achieve a second objective: to empower customers, who will be able to consume energy from an assigned generation plant through this model,” Xalabarder explained.

Electra Caldense Holding is a business group founded in 1917 in Caldes de Montbui. Over its 109 years of history, it has evolved from supplying electricity locally to becoming a comprehensive company operating in several municipalities across Catalonia, engaged in electricity distribution, the sale of electricity and gas, energy communities, electric mobility, renewable energy generation and telecommunications, among other activities.