Canary in the coal mine: Spanish island nears 100% renewables

The most remote of Spain’s Canary Islands is billing itself as the world’s first energy self-sufficient island that has never been hooked up to a power grid, as it nears its goal of 100 per cent renewable energy generation.

El Hierro, the off-grid island off the west coast of Africa is reportedly within months of powering itself from 100 per cent renewable energy, generated from a mix of wind and hydro-power.

Unlike the Danish island of Samso – which is itself energy-independent, but was previously connected to Denmark’s grid – the active volcanic island of El Hierro, with a population of about 10,000, could never hook up to Spain’s power grid.

Instead, as NPR.org’s Lauren Frayer reports, it used to ship in 6,600 tonnes of expensive and dirty diesel fuel a year – the equivalent of 40,000 barrels of oil — to power its electricity generators.

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El Hierro’s upper reservoir. Source: Lauren Frayer, NPR

In the last couple of months, however, El Hierro has switched on its Gorona del Viento power plant, a $110 million hybrid wind and hydro project that, by the end of 2104, is expected to generate all of the island’s energy needs of up to 48GWh per year.

The plant consists of five big industrial windmills and two damns. On days with little wind, water stored in the plant’s upper reservoir (a naturally occuring volcanic lake) will be released through turbines into a lower reservoir, to generate energy.

On windy days and nights – the Canary Islands’ are well exposed to Atlantic Ocean gusts – when production exceeds demand, excess energy is used to pump water from the sea-level lake back up the mountain to the upper reservoir, for storage until the wind drops again.

Smart technology means that within five seconds of the wind dying down, the hydro kicks in, ensuring seamless energy delivery for the island’s residents.

According to the NPR report, El Hierro is the first to combine hydro and wind technology in this way – an effort that no doubt influenced Unesco in naming it, recently, as one of the world’s 111 global geopark sites for making progress in promoting sustainable development.

(The geologically youngest of the Canaries archipelago “is among the best representations of a single volcanic island” with scientific, scenic and educational features that deserve conservation, such as lava tubes, volcanic craters and mineral water springs, Unesco said last week in a statement.)

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The inner workings of El Hierro’s hybrid wind and hydro power plant. Source: Lauren Frayer, NPR

“The wind machines, we basically ordered out of catalog; we didn’t invent the technology. Same with the water turbines,” said Juan Manuel Quintero, an engineer who serves on the board of the Gorona del Viento plant. “The innovation we made is hooking up the two systems together.”

The Spanish government, a local university and a Spanish power company all collaborated on the project. Gorona del Viento is one of the last major efforts the Spanish government approved before the financial crisis forced it to cut all subsidies for renewable energy.

“We’re lucky the crisis came when the project was almost finished,” said, Alpidio Armas, head of the island’s local government.

For residents, it won’t be an immediate financial win, as electricity prices are set at the national level. But they do get energy security for the future.

“How much will be the price for oil in 20 years’ time? We don’t know! But we are sure that we will still have wind in the Canary Islands in 20 years time,” said economist Gonzalo Escribano of the Elcano Royal Institute, a think tank in Madrid. “And the price, or the cost to generate an additional gigawatt, will be … zero.”

Comments

3 responses to “Canary in the coal mine: Spanish island nears 100% renewables”

  1. Tommyk82 . Avatar
    Tommyk82 .

    typo :): “and hydro project that, by the end of [2104], is expected to generate all of the island’s energy needs of up to 48GWh per year.”

  2. john Avatar
    john

    All I can say is well done

  3. takver Avatar
    takver

    While this is impressive, I do believe Tokelau, located in the Pacific north of Samoa, became the first energy self-sufficient islands to became 100% renewable on solar PV and battery storage in 2012.
    http://takvera.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/tokelau-ditches-diesel-for-100-percent.html

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