El Hierro To Become World's First Renewable Energy Island

From EarthTechling's Jasmine Greene:

The small island of El Hierro – iron in Spanish – is located in the Canary Islands 1,500 miles off the coast of Spain. Aside from being a main tourist attraction, El Hierro will also reportedly soon become the world’s first island to run off of 100 percent renewable energy.

The renewable energy consists of an 11.5 MW wind farm and 11.3 MW hydroelectric plant that will generate around 80 percent of the island’s needs, with the remaining 20 percent produced via solar thermal collectors and grid-connected photovoltaics. Producing local energy reportedly will offset 18,200 tons of CO2 alone due to cutting out oil transport to this remote location.

The project will utilize ABB‘s power and automation solution, which will electrify and control the hydroelectric plants and integrate the power generated from the wind and hydropower turbines to the standard island grid. ABB’s process, the company said, will “maintain stable plant frequency and voltage by sharing active and reactive power demand in the generators and tie-lines,” which allows the plants to continue operating despite large margins in power fluctuation. The entire renewable energy grid will also be controlled by an ABB distributed control system, which will monitor the four hydropower turbines, pumped storage process, the interconnection substation and communicate with the new wind farm.

By communicating with the wind farm, ABB said, its control solution “will automatically start releasing water from the upper reservoir to generate power at the hydroelectric plant whenever the wind power generated is insufficient to meet demand. Conversely, excess wind power will be used to pump water to the upper reservoir, for use when wind power is low.”

Plans call for this ambitious project to be completed by the end of this year. It will cost $87 million and reportedly provide electricity for the island’s entire 11,000 inhabitants.

Comments

[Jigar Shah]

03:17 PM on 07/11/2011

At $7K+ per resident this is a great experiment but looking to see if we can scale it by reducing the price per resident to less than $1K per person, accounting for the existing infrastructure.

[alamantra]

11:38 AM on 07/07/2011

I love the "can't do" spirit I've been seeing in this comments section: "Oh, America is too big. In order to be able to drive our economy we must poison the air, land and water with finite sources of energy such as coal and oil and we must put the planet at risk with nuclear power." What a load of malarkey. In addition to solar, wind and hydro, there is geothermal energy. The reality is that there is nothing but energy on this planet, and its "renewable." We just have to move beyond the entrenched interests, that have made so much money from the status quo, that they can afford to oppose a better, more sustainable way. It also means changing the global economic infrastructure. The technological ability is here, and has been.

[SolarPowerGuy]

02:36 AM on 07/07/2011

Coastal California could do this, too. Let's!

[lifeinopera]

09:16 PM on 07/06/2011

If we don't lead in alternative fuels and energy, someone else will. Grats to the island.

[dekendall]

08:21 PM on 07/06/2011

This is great news for a small number of people. The cities throughout the US amount to hundreds of thousands or many millions of people plus all the industries and buisnes's that need power. This island needs a very small amount of power and can get enough from Hydro and wind and solar. This is just the tip of the iceburg and is not realistic for much of the world

[Daffhouse]

06:01 PM on 07/06/2011

Huh? Cost 87,000,000 (87 million) dollars. Hey, that is only 79,000 per person. Hell of a deal

Stupid people don't know they are stupid....sad

[ppswg]

06:47 PM on 07/06/2011

$79,000.00 divided by how many years, if you want to be more presice.

[alvdh1]

01:33 PM on 07/07/2011

$87,000,000/11,000 = $7,909.09.

[oldecrankyman]

08:06 PM on 07/06/2011

Um, your calculator must have a glitch. It's $7,909.09 per person. That's pretty reasonable, and should show a return on investment pretty quickly.

Ironic that somebody who makes such a basic mistake would be labeling others as stupid.

[ivanhoemb]

05:32 PM on 07/06/2011

So, as long as you live on a remote island, with only 11,000 inhabitants, a wind/solar/hydroelectric solution can work. Not exactly practical for the rest of us.

[ppswg]

06:45 PM on 07/06/2011

Why not just bigger-

[RosieRetro]

05:13 PM on 07/06/2011

Way to go El Hierro!

I have written President Obama, various members of Congress, Republican presidential candidates, and tweeted about how our nation needs to build more hydroelectric dams to harness the power of the waters flooding our nation's heartland. If you research Hoover Dam, you will find out that in another 30 years, it will be over 100 years old and still producing electric power that feeds several states.

Construction of hydroelectric dams of all sizes would help put some Americans back to work for a while and help created more economical electrical power to support newer businesses as they hired workers.

Using hydroelectric technology, coastal cities like New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Louisiana could have cheaper, cleaner electrical power.

We need to end our nation's participation in foreign-nation physical infrastructure-rebuilding across the pond that is creating haters, and concentrate on spending on creating here at home in the United States.

Make the 2012 presidential election a referendum on what you want done, not what the candidates want to do if they get elected. Tell them what they need to do in order to get your vote. I have, and none are cowboying or cowgirling up to embracing hydroelectric power. I may just have to find someone's name to write in.

[ivanhoemb]

05:36 PM on 07/06/2011

Hydroelectric power is, indeed, a good way to subsidize the US electrical grid. Good luck getting local government, federal government, EPA, environmentalists, and private property owners to agree on the locations of the dams, and what to do with the people dispossessed by the lakes that will be created. And if the snail darter (or some other obscure, useless, marine animal) shows up in the waterway, the dam will be closed down!

[realityCheckInTheMail]

08:01 PM on 07/06/2011

Exactly my point.

I'm generally a bit of an enviro-skeptic. However, I do think the combination of wind power, pumped hydro storage, and long-distance, DC transmission could work for the US. We have lots of wind in the middle of the country, and lots of relatively empty land could support some combination of windmills and pumped hydro lakes.

Running a DC transmission line from Montana to Western OR is definitely realistic. We already have a longer DC line that connects Western OR to southern CA.

So basically, we could power a significant portion of OR, WA and CA from windpower in Montana and the Dakotas. The barriers are the suspects you identify. The feds, the EPA, environmentalists, and NIMBY rural landowners. These are the enemies of utility scale renewable energy, and not the fossil fuel companies.

[aligatorhardt]

08:26 PM on 07/06/2011

This administration has plans for adding electric generation to dams built for flood control and irrigation. No new dams required for those sites. Administration Lays the Groundwork for Hydropower Boom | Renewable Energy News Article

[OcotilloKid]

04:22 PM on 07/06/2011

Turns out we need to open as many coal fired energy plants as possible in order to save the planet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14002264

[RosieRetro]

05:43 PM on 07/06/2011

Are you forgetting about China's gigantic Three Gorges Hydroelectric Dam project? They ain't planning on stick'in with fossil fuels forever.

[Dan Crabtree]

08:01 PM on 07/06/2011

Sadly obamas epa is closing three coal fired energy plants in west virginia..dispalacing hundreds of workers..reason.. they could not comply with the new emmision requirements of the new epa.

[canweallthink]

05:14 PM on 07/08/2011

Awesome - three less spewing plants.

[aligatorhardt]

06:29 AM on 07/11/2011

Good for the EPA. They can pay their own way or close down.  Coal Costs the U.S. $500 Billion Annually in Health, Economic, Environmental Impacts | Fast Company

[littlemonster]

04:18 PM on 07/06/2011

Small island does 'big things.' The US? Not so much.

[Dan Crabtree]

08:01 PM on 07/06/2011

Hey at 80 grand a head anything is possible

[alvdh1]

01:28 PM on 07/07/2011

You are typing from a computer which also has a calculator. $87,000,000 / 11,000 = $7,909.09. Try it. You might actually learn something.

[Jeremyewilliams]

03:41 PM on 07/06/2011

I thought the republicans said this was impossible!

[aligatorhardt]

06:31 AM on 07/11/2011

Why do you believe them?

[soopershrink]

03:32 PM on 07/06/2011

You better be careful that big oil and their lap dogs in congress don't catch you printing stories about programs like this where they can't charge you for something or they'll arrest you under their patriot act for spreading socialist propaganda. The'll send you to one of their reprogramming centers and beforee you know it you'll find yourself marching with the tea baggers! Dey haf ways of dealing wit choo!!

[CoronaDischarge]

03:02 PM on 07/06/2011

It's really a brilliant situation, with the availability of an upper reservoir to store the potential energy, the limited numbers of people, the isolation from the grid ... so much will be learned about how to live long term into the future.

[RosieRetro]

05:18 PM on 07/06/2011

Have you researched how many states are benefitting from Hoover Dam in Nevada? Both China and Chili have huge hydroelectric dam projects under construction to get away from depending on fossil fuels to power their nation. Hydroelectric dams of all sizes can be built. That fresh water shortage that scientists are predicting will happen in the future, can be accessed via reservoirs build for hydroelectric dams.

[JWerner]

06:41 PM on 07/06/2011

Dams are a double-bladed sword. On the one hand, they do produce energy cleaner than oil and coal. . .but on the other hand, they can have severe impacts on the local environment due to the changes in the water table it causes, especially when poorly planned or managed.

[dasunx]

02:44 PM on 07/06/2011

It is nice to see that they are able to use hydroelectric plants on the island and not have the ecoites try and stop them like the ecoites have in this country........ In the U.S. the Eco Mob have tried to have hydroelectric plants removed........

[mathme]

02:15 PM on 07/06/2011

To everyone making complaints about the cost of this:
In 1935, amidst the Great Depression, congress authorized the equivalent of 6.6 billion dollars for the Rural Electrification Act. This brought electricity to 500,000 farms. That's around $13K per household. When did the US get so adamant about not being able to do anything? Do you know how many people a project like that employed? How much that stimulated the economy? It's all because it was the right thing to do for the future and for the country. But now, ohhh no! Don't spend money to advance us as a country! Let's stay right where we are while the rest of the world passes us buy so we can buy windmills from China in 5 years.

[Rory Canfield]

02:27 PM on 07/06/2011

I will ask again, what is stopping you the individual from investing in it for yourself or do you just think the govt can do it?
Because of our current infastructure, one of the best things we can do is start by reducing our energy requirements (turn off lights, AC, etc) then go after implementing renewables at the individual, community level to ease the cost burden on the infastructure. There is also no sense in putting in renewable energy technology if we do not address the energy consumption problem we have.

[mathme]

02:38 PM on 07/06/2011

Because the government exists to do things like build infrastructure. We elect our representatives and if it's something that the people want done, the government can do it. We exist as a nation, not a hodge podge of city states.

[aligatorhardt]

08:30 PM on 07/06/2011

Installing renewable energy allows the worst of the dirty power to be taken off line.  Every bit helps. There is no need to ration solutions to one thing at a time.

[Dan Crabtree]

08:02 PM on 07/06/2011

We already do..