“The great revolution that is to come in the energy world is that of storage, batteries.” This statement could be the projection of many gurus in the energy sector, but if the person who pronounces it is David Ruiz de Andrés, founder and CEO of Grenergy, and it is accompanied by an investment of 1.3 billion euros, the prediction gains weight. This is the amount they have allocated to Oasis de Atacama, the largest photovoltaic energy storage project in the world with 4.1 gigawatts, located in Chile.
It also wins because the energy world does not forget a similar statement by a young entrepreneur David Ruiz de Andrés at the dawn of the century. So what it predicted was the great revolution in solar panels.
After 2005, after an emissions reduction plan executed in his first entrepreneurial project, an international marketing company, Ruiz de Andrés was clear that the business of the future was in solar panels. In 2007 he founded Grenergy to fully imbibe his conviction.
It was the first renewable boom in Spain. Their bet was fueled by succulent bonuses from the State that tried to encourage a technology that was still very expensive and incapable of competing with fossils. “Time has proven us right. There has never been a more competitive technology in history. It is the one that has evolved the most in both cost and performance in less time. When we started, a plant cost seven million dollars per MW, now, half a million,” says Ruiz de Andrés.
The end of those large bonuses wiped out many of the pioneering companies in the sector. Not with Grenergy. That SME is now a multinational that in 2022 had a turnover of almost 300 million euros and the gross operating profit (ebitda) exceeded 50 million euros. It employs more than half a thousand people in 10 countries, with a portfolio of 15 GW in different stages of development, and its founder has a place on the Forbes list of the greatest fortunes in Spain, where he is attributed a net worth of 600 millions.
This has been possible because Ruiz de Andrés never gave up. When the ravages of the financial crisis hit Spain in 2012, Grenergy went to the Americas. Chile became its center of operations, and today it is the second most important country for the company. Latin America was his field of experimentation. In countries like Chile, Mexico or Peru, it went to numerous public auctions to gain capacity. But the real secret of its success has been the signing of long-term bilateral contracts (PPA in the jargon of the sector) to sell the energy produced by a practice that it has been applying since the beginning. As well as the rotation of assets to finance new investments and control debt. The so-called Valkyria project is along this line, which when completed will involve the sale of 1,000 MW, initially valued at 1,200 million.
Grenergy has been one of the few Spanish companies, like the telecommunications operator MásMóvil, that has been able to successfully make the leap from the Alternative Stock Market (now called BME Growth) to the continuous market. “We went to MAB at one of the worst times for that market, in 2015. The Gowex scandal was in full swing. But it has been one of the best decisions we have ever made,” Ruiz acknowledges. That same year it became the company with the greatest appreciation on the Spanish stock market. A milestone that was repeated in 2018. The arrival of the PSOE to power and its powerful commitment to renewable energy skyrocketed the price by 254% that year. It was not a one-time success. “It is a company that has demonstrated excellent execution capacity since its listing in 2015, successfully fulfilling two business plans 2016-2017 and 2018-2020,” acknowledges Eduardo Imedio Cano, Renta 4 analyst, in one of his reports about the company.
In 2023 it celebrated its investor day for the first time. He did it in November and presented a future project that has batteries as a strategic bet. The company is a pioneer in the signing of long-term contracts (PPA) that combine in the same contract the sale of renewable energy during the day at one price and that accumulated in batteries for night use with a different amount. They have tested it in Chile and hope to extend the model throughout Spain and Europe, where they now see greater growth potential.
In the next three years, it hopes to generate an installed solar and wind energy capacity of 5 GW of solar and 4.1 GWh of batteries. Rotate between 350 and 450 MW annually and invest 2,600 million euros, of which 800 million will be in batteries. In energy alone, it hopes to obtain an EBITDA of 300 million euros. “Although the proposed business model will require heavy investments, the objectives set by the company seem achievable to us, since they are based on conservative hypotheses and with potential catalysts,” says Eduardo Imedio.
