Acciona Energía opens 42-bay EV hub in Badajoz

Acciona Energía has opened a 42-bay public EV charging station at the El Faro shopping centre in Badajoz, Extremadura, in one of the largest public charging deployments by a single operator in Spain to date.

The site carries 2,000kW of contracted power, distributed across four 240kW ultra-fast chargers serving eight bays, ten 80kW fast chargers serving 20 bays, and seven 22kW AC chargers covering the remaining 14 bays. Hardware is supplied by Circutor, the Spanish EV charging manufacturer. Drivers can access the station through Acciona's dedicated charging app or via ad hoc payment at the point of use.

The site was built in partnership with Castellana Properties, the Spanish real estate investment company that owns and operates shopping and retail parks across the country. Castellana acquired the Islazul centre in Madrid for €340 million in March 2026, bringing its portfolio to 23 assets with a gross asset value exceeding €2.222 billion, and its footprint increasingly overlaps with the interior and secondary-city markets that Acciona Energía is targeting for charging deployment.

Extremadura is commercially significant beyond its size. Around 60% of Spain's public chargers are concentrated in Madrid, Catalonia, and Andalusia, leaving interior regions including Extremadura with wider spacing between sites. The AFIR mandate, the EU-level directive requiring at least one 150kW charger every 60km along the TEN-T core network, adds a regulatory floor under investment in precisely these corridors.

Acciona Energía entered EV charging in late 2021 through a dedicated business unit, then accelerated in April 2025 by acquiring Cable Energía, the operator of the Shell Recharge network in Spain and Portugal outside Shell service stations. That deal added 396 active charging points across the Iberian Peninsula and a pipeline of 321 further sites under development. The company now provides access to more than 5,000 charging points, a combination of its own infrastructure and third-party network agreements, all powered by its own 100% renewable generation. That generation asset distinguishes it from pure-play charging operators such as Iberdrola, Endesa X, and Repsol, none of which combine vertically integrated renewable supply with a retail-park deployment model at comparable scale.

The broader policy environment is moving in the same direction. Spain's Ministry of Ecological Transition announced a €104.8 million investment in transport electrification under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, backed by EU funds, of which €97 million targets EV charging infrastructure to add 2,674 new chargepoints nationally. Spain recorded over 40% year-on-year growth in EV sales in March 2026, consistent with the four other largest EU markets. Total operational public charging points in Spain exceeded 50,000 by end of 2025, following 35, 40% annual infrastructure growth, though a significant number of installed chargers remained non-operational due to grid connection and administrative delays.

Acciona Energía has stated a target of 25,000 public access points by 2030. The Badajoz opening, anchored by a landlord with assets concentrated in the same underserved interior geography, positions the company to occupy high-dwell-time commercial venues in thin-coverage markets before competitors commit capital to the same locations.