Island uses combined hydro and wind power to generate electricity

[Mike Tomlinson]

One of the smaller Canary islands, el Hierro, has built a combined hydro/wind power station. Hydro is used by allowing water to flow from an upper reservoir to a lower reservoir, driving turbines, and wind power is used to pump the water back up to the upper reservoir.

"At the end of June its new hydro-wind facility, Gorona del Viento, came fully on stream and in July and August it provided roughly half of the island's energy needs. That means the island's 10,000 inhabitants are suddenly less reliant on supplies of diesel arriving over unpredictable seas from Tenerife, 200km away"

It's not the sort of solution that could be applied everywhere, of course, but I found this particular application interesting. I worked on the neighbouring island, La Palma, for many years.

[Tim+]

More like 20km, not 200.

I don't think that there is any argument that renewables can work well in some places. The Canaries are blessed with lots of wind and El Hiero clearly has the important storage capacity.

Currently we lack storage (and wind a lot of the time).

Tim

[Chris Hogg]

I've read about this before; they use an extinct volcano crater for the upper reservoir, IIRC.

I imagine the Canary Islands are sufficiently far south that they could also gainfully use solar to supplement the wind generators.

The alternative to a lower reservoir is the sea itself, but that requires the right topography close to the coast to create an upper reservoir, and making sure that salt water doesn't leak from the upper reservoir and contaminate the local water table, or if it does leak, that it doesn't matter.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim+ escribió:

205km, centre to centre according to this.

The other small island, La Gomera, is about 80km from La Palma but some days a trick of the light makes it look much, much closer.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

Indeed, the el Hierro scheme uses fresh water for exactly that reason, so that sea water doesn't contaminate the aquifer if the reservoirs or pipework leak. Fresh water is in short supply in the Canaries so they are very careful with it.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim+ escribió:

ps. if it really were 20km, they would have some difficulty operating inter-island flights :)

Flights between el Hierro Valverde (VDE) and Tenerife Norte (TFN) take

40 minutes, between TFN and la Palma (SPC) 30 minutes. I've flown between the various islands so many times I've lost count.

[soup]

Nah, shortest inter-island flight flight is 2.7km(47 secs)

;O)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Top notch analysis of just how much of this is green bullshit and how much is real

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes, but I'd have thought they should be using Geothermal means to give them power. I mean all those islands are volcano's. Brian

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes Lapalma is pretty close. I have been there and the locals seem to delight in telling tourists about the way half the island is going to split off and destroy everything nearby and along the african coast. They even take you to a freshish lava flow and allow you to melt the soles of your shoes when you walk on it and lagh..... Brian

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes and there are often so many English on them I wonder if by now instead of Spanish newspapers given out,they might try uk ones? sadly though I'd like to go back, being blind and my spanish is crap, I'll pass. Brian

[Mike Tomlinson]

Ah, yes, the old story about the side of the Cumbre Vieja falling off and causing a mega-tsunami which will inundate America. Where I worked we could watch it all happen from a safe distance.

La Palma isn't ruined by over-development for tourism like the eastern Canary islands. It's unspoilt and they plan to keep it like that. There won't be any concrete tourist hell-holes, ever. It's a beautiful place with stunning views and several micro-climates. It's not called 'la isla bonita' for nothing.

En el artículo , Brian-Gaff escribió:

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

A very interesting link, thanks, and the comments are worth a read too. For me, the take-away is that GdV provides useful input to the island's power grid but is not the "100% of energy supplies" panacea suggested by the BBC article. In other words, it's best seen as part of an integrated energy solution taking in oil, hydro and wind.

It makes it clear that the original purpose of the GdV project was to pump fresh water up to a large reservoir for distribution (some by gravity, presumably) to other parts of the island and that the hydro generation came as an afterthought.

It also clarifies that GdV is pretty much experimental and that lessons are still being learnt in how best to achieve the best balance between fresh water supply, reservoir levels, power generation, and having to extract power from the grid to pump water back up to the upper reservoir when there is insufficient wind available. It must be quite a delicate balancing act and one I would have thought would be better handled by software rather than wetware.

[Chris Hogg]

Quite, El Heirro being the youngest island, and still with active vulcanism. The Gorona del Viento pumped hydro/wind installation is in the NE of the island, as is much of the current earthquake activity

. The Wiki entry for Valverde, the neighbouring town, says 'Volcanism is prominent, with several cinder cones and areas of lava flow to be seen' .

One hopes that the old volcanic crater that is the upper reservoir doesn't suddenly become active again!

[Jethro_uk]

Went to Iceland last year. Hotel we stayed in (as did every house in the city, apparently) had a feed of hot water from the geothermal springs. It's dirty (not potable) but used for heating.

Too cheap to meter ;)

[Tim+]

Ah, it was La Gomera I was thinking of. But it is only about 20km from Tenerife. Dunno why La Palma entered the discussion.

Tim

[Al]

Bit like this :-

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim+ escribió:

I mentioned it because I worked there for many years and it's close to Hierro, Gomera and Tenerife. All the Canary islands have the same problem with fresh water and needing oil to be shipped in for their power stations.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

Fresh boiling water for free then :)

There's an active sea volcano off the southern tip of Hierro which erupted in 2012:

The Canary archipelago is volcanic, and the activity follows a line running roughly north-east to south-west, with south west being the most recent.

The volcanoes of San Antonio and Teneguia on the southern tip of La Palma are recent; Teneguia erupted in 1972 and I've walked around it. In some places steam erupts from ventholes and rocks are hot enough to fry bacon and eggs on.

[harry]

I can see you never read that did you? Most of the pumped hydro water is used for irrigation.