The world's first island powered entirely by wind and a lake that works as a huge battery!
It actually takes quite a lot of fossil fuel power to reach the tiny Spanish island of El Hierro. You have to catch a commercial jet flight, a propeller plane and then a ferry to reach El Hierro, the first island in the world to be energy self-sufficient. Achieved through a €54 million project combining a greater than 11 megawatt wind farm and two hydroelectric projects.
This hydro-eolic project, created by the local Gorona del Viento El Hierro consortium with financial aid from the European Union, and officially inaugurated in 2015, consists of five wind turbines of type E-70 capable of producing 11.5 megawatts of wind power to supply electricity for approximately 11,000 residents, an additional number of tourists, and three water desalination facilities. The hybrid wind/pumped hydro storage system stores surplus wind power by pumping water up 700 meters (approximately 2,300 feet) to fill the crater of an extinct volcano. When winds are calm or when demand exceeds supply, water is released from the crater to generate 11.3 MW of electricity, filling an artificial basin created at the bottom of the extinct volcano. Water in the lower basin is then pumped back up again to the upper reservoir when there is excess wind power.
The closed-loop hybrid wind/hydro system is expected to save approximately US$4M per year (calculated with January 2011 oil prices) previously spent on about 40,000 barrels of crude oil imported annually, and makes the island completely self-sufficient for electrical energy.
Ones can also calculate that it costs more to pay the interest on the debt taken out to build it than it would to just buy the diesel. And of course that's before you actually pay back the $110M debt. Diesel: $2.70 / gal for forward contract Jan 2015. How much does a year's worth of diesel cost the island? 40,000 BBL x 31.5 gal / BBL x 2.70 / gal = $3.4M / year.
Plant Cost: $110M for the plant - borrowed by the Spanish govt at about 4% in 2007. That's $4.4M / year just to pay the coupon on the bond. Then ultimately you have to pay the principle back too. Before you just had diesel generators, now you have pumps, a dam, windmills and turbines to maintain. Four kinds of experts instead of one kind of expert. And four kinds of experts that are harder to find.
I like the idea of the first island in the world to be energy self-sufficient, but we need to do the calculations and executions better and smarter for future installations. Anyway R&D costs...
