The Canary Island of El Hierro has beaten another world record in the use of renewable energies in isolated areas, by exceeding 18 consecutive days using exclusively power generated by Gorona del Viento’s Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station.
El Hierro’s Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station has succeeded in meeting 100% of the Island’s demand for electricity exclusively with renewable energy for 18 successive days, accomplishing this feat between 25 January and today, 12 February.
Belén Allende, the Chair of Gorona del Viento, (which is composed of the El Hierro Island Council, Endesa, the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands and the Canarian Government) today shared news of this achievement. She referred to “this milestone, which will help to bring sustainability into the spotlight; it will provide encouragement to those of us who believe that it is possible to supply 100% of power from renewables, and reassure us that we’re on the right track”.
Ms Allende expressed her pride in the fact that El Hierro is now achieving in excess of the targets set for 2030 by the European Union. In 2017, the Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station supplied almost 50% of the island’s demand for energy, but the figures for 2018 are even more encouraging when it is taken into account that 66% of the power generated on the Island during January was supplied by Gorona del Viento’s plant. “Although clean energy sources have been the exclusive source of power during February so far, today we’re still not at 100%, but we are meeting 70% of the Island’s demand for electricity, something that until very recently seemed impossible,” she said.
So far this year, The Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station has met 100% of the demand for a period of over 560 hours, and has done so for over 2,000 hours in total since it began to operate in June 2015 as a normal commercial company. “These results are possible thanks to the collaboration between Gorona del Viento and Red Eléctrica de España, to the people of the island, who backed this exciting project based on sustainability, and to those of us who believed in Gorona, and who took on the challenge of making us not only the true owners, but also the managers, of our own wind power, our solar power and our own resources,” she added.
Belén Allende reminded everyone that the Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station, once considered an impossible dream, is now a tangible reality, and a profitable one at that—in 2018, it will benefit the island’s population with a distribution of share capital among Gorona’s shareholders, among whom the Island Council is the majority shareholder.
Belén Allende reminded everyone that the Wind-Pumped Hydro Power Station, once considered an impossible dream, is now a tangible reality, and a profitable one at that—in 2018, it will benefit the island’s population with a distribution of share capital among Gorona’s shareholders, among whom the Island Council is the majority shareholder.
The Chair also highlighted the possibilities that Gorona del Viento has opened up for the El Hierro brand, promoting the Island as a tourist destination that cares for the environment, and making it a main focus of interest “for scientific tourism in the shape of experts from the fields of energy, students, responsible institutions and the many people who travel to the Island out of interest in this project that enables us to maximise the use of renewable energies in an isolated location, particularly with figures as remarkable as those we have achieved today with the 18-day record”.
