How Portugal is ending the energy crisis
The daily life of Nuno Santos Silva, 36 years old, is a job divided between the fresh air of Alentejo and a small office in a container installed in the middle of a solar power plant. It’s not just any center. Ourika was the first large-scale photovoltaic plant to start operating in Portugal without any subsidy. The result of an investment of €35 million, it was inaugurated in 2018, occupying around 100 hectares in Ourique. Today it belongs to the German Allianz, which in recent years has decided to invest in renewable energy assets, a source of long-term income with relative predictability: as long as there is sun, there are electrons that yield dollar signs. And it is Nuno who travels to the center daily as a maintenance supervisor. The employee of Prosolia, the Portuguese-Spanish company that developed this project, has been following the project since 2018. He previously lived in Castro Verde and worked at Somincor. It is a story, among many others, of a generation of engineers living off the momentum that renewables have had in Portugal in recent years. This wave of investments that promise to continue. And it is a key element for the country’s resilience in a context of profound insecurity that Europe will experience in the energy field.
On a sunny Friday in November, Nuno Santos Silva explains that photovoltaic plants will always need human intervention. “We have several types of corrective and preventive maintenance. The solar panel has a fault that can be caused by shadows, with power failures. And there are rats that gnaw cables. But they were already here. We are the ones who came here to occupy your space”, he points out. Rats, rabbits, snakes and sheep are regular visitors to a plant that also occasionally receives field trips. The Ourika plant only employs three people permanently, but maintenance operations throughout the year involve more than 30 to 40 people from different companies.
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