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Wallbox and Iberdrola have signed a long-term on-site) Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to produce, consume and reuse 100 % of the energy produced at its plant and offices in Barcelona’s Zona Franca.

Iberdrola’s investment in the photovoltaic installation will allow Wallbox to make savings in the production and consumption of green energy from day one. In this way, the energy company continues to highlight the competitiveness of renewables through bilateral contracts that promote energy supply at competitive and stable prices with large customers committed to sustainable consumption. With this collaboration, Wallbox will meet its goal of operating in these facilities with energy autonomy, as well as reducing its carbon footprint, putting itself at the forefront of productive energy management by relying mostly on solar energy.

The Wallbox factory in Barcelona’s Zona Franca will have photovoltaic solar panels that will produce 1,500 kWh/day for the self-consumption of these facilities and offices, equivalent to the consumption of 500 homes. Installation at the offices will begin at the end of April and is expected to be completed by the end of June, allowing the photovoltaic system to come into operation at the beginning of the second half of the year.

Smart, bidirectional energy

The facilities will also have a unique, smart and bidirectional energy management system, which will optimise generation, storage and use of the grid. Through regeneration, 75 % of the energy consumed in the production process is returned to the internal energy grid for reuse. The new plant is expected to be fully operational in September this year.

Both due to the volume of green energy production generated, as well as due to the development of a new generation of nZEB (Zero Energy Building) buildings, the Wallbox plant is a pioneering building with almost zero energy consumption, aligning itself with the trends of the new sustainable engineering, as well as in self-consumption at a global level.

“These collaboration formulas, in which Iberdrola invests and allows its customers to save from the outset by producing renewable energy at its facilities, highlight the competitiveness of renewables and continue to open up opportunities for undertaking projects that are transforming the present and future of energy in our country. These long-term power purchase and sale contracts provide stability to customers and have become an optimal tool for managing the electricity supply of large consumers who are committed to clean and sustainable consumption. In this case, we also maximised the infrastructure by taking advantage of the available surface area on the factory roofs, which we combined with an innovative energy efficiency system”, explains Raquel Blanco, global director of Smart Mobility at Iberdrola.

“With this unprecedented action in the industry, we wanted to demonstrate our commitment to accelerating the process of adopting cleaner energy in everyday life. Energy consumption around the world is changing at an accelerating pace, which leads us to develop products that promote decarbonisation. Thanks to this agreement, our products will also be manufactured with renewable energy, therefore closing the production circle in the most sustainable way possible,” said Enric Asunción, CEO of Wallbox.

Taking self-consumption to the next level

In February this year, Wallbox launched a pilot project to apply bi-directional charging technology to enable the use of energy stored in electric car batteries to supply part of the surplus energy demand of its corporate offices. The system, installed at the corporate headquarters in Barcelona’s Zona Franca, consists of a fleet of Quasar bi-directional chargers and a fleet of Nissan Leaf electric vehicles.

The vehicles are available for use by Wallbox employees and are recharged at night to power the offices during the day. In this way, the building behaves as a smart ecosystem, where its architecture is maximised to capture available solar energy and release or store it on demand through the cars, which act as buffers at times when the building’s energy demand exceeds either the contracted power or that generated by the solar panels.

“This innovative ecosystem has a dual system of stationary and mobile batteries. The former offer the first line of basic coverage and are configured to charge with a purely renewable energy mix, while the latter squeeze the flexibility capabilities offered by electric vehicles, both for emission-free mobility and as a storage resource with high energy density,” said Eduard Castañeda, CPO of Wallbox. “The benefit is again twofold as Wallbox employees are offered access to a sustainable means of transport, while at the same time the need for power from the grid is reduced, as the vehicles become both generators and storage. The grid becomes more flexible and efficient with the flattening of the generation/consumption curve”.

The intention is to increase the fleet of vehicles and Quasar bi-directional chargers until full energy supply autonomy is achieved. Right now, Wallbox already has 7 of them and the fleet will be increased by 15 additional vehicles. “We not only seek to develop the new technologies that will enable the use and management of clean energy globally, but we are also playing a leading role in their adoption. We live our commitment to sustainability from within, it is in our DNA”, concludes Casteñeda.