Spanish island generates its own clean energy

An island in the Canaries has developed a unique system to produce all the electricity it needs. The combination of wind and hydro power provides seamless energy, saves Spain money, and acts as a model for the future.

Deutsche Welle, 18 Nov 2014

The irony is that it actually takes quite a lot of fossil fuel to reach the tiny island of El Hierro, population 10,000. You'd need to catch at least one commercial flight, then a propeller plane or a ferry to reach the remote outpost 1,000 kilometers from the European mainland in the Atlantic Ocean. It's the last land Christopher Columbus saw before reaching the New World.

The island is part of the Canary Islands and belongs to Spain, although it takes about a 12-hour journey to get there from the Iberian Peninsula. That's the same voyage barges of diesel fuel had to make before the island's shift to renewable energy. The seabed around the active volcanic island is too volatile, and the water too deep, for undersea electricity lines. The only way the island got its power was by shipping in about 6,600 tons of diesel fuel by boat each year - an expensive and dirty endeavor.

El Hierro now bills itself as world's first self-sufficient island in terms of energy. To power the island, it's transitioned from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy, thanks to a mix of wind and hydro power.

How it works

Water flows into the lower lake in
 the El Hierro electricity generation
system

Wind turbines harness the Canary Islands' Atlantic gusts. When production exceeds demand - such as at night, for example - excess energy is used to pump water from a sea-level tank into a natural crater half a mile uphill on El Hierro's volcano. When the wind dies down, the water is released through a turbine to generate more power.

Other islands have similarly managed to become energy independent, such as the tiny self-governing island of Tokelau in the South Pacific, and the Danish island, Samso. But whereas these have done so with the help of having previously been hooked up to a power grid, El Hierro made the change in isolation.

The centerpiece of El Hierro has long been a massive rocky volcano at the island's center. Now, it's dotted with five huge wind turbines that provide the entire island's electricity, about 48 gigawatt hours.

"They're 64 meters high. So just getting them onto the island and up this mountain was a logistical nightmare!" laughs engineer Juan Manuel Quintero, who sits on the board of the Gorona del Viento power plant. "They were split into three parts that each arrived at different ports. We had to widen the road to get them through!"

Everything is connected with sensors, so that within five seconds of the wind dying down, the hydro part of the plant kicks in. For residents, the lights don't even flicker.

It's a relatively simple system that requires only two engineers to monitor it around-the-clock. Quintero described it as a unique system.

"It's been done separately, but no one's ever combined water and wind," Quintero said. The wind machines and water turbines were purchased pre-made, he added. "The innovation we made is hooking up the two systems together."

Just five massive turbines provide most of the island's power

An investment in the future

The Spanish government, a local university and a Spanish power company helped fund the project, with a total investment of 90 million euros ($113 million).

The Gorona del Viento power station was one of the last projects Spain approved before the economic crisis prompted the government to halt all of its subsidies for renewable energy, two years ago.

El Hierro's governor, Alpidio Armas, says that El Hierro has seen increasing emigration. People born in El Hierro are spread all over Europe and the Americas, where they've traveled in search of jobs or a better life, away from the windy, harsh outpost. But now, the governor hopes this new power station could bring people back - and make them proud of their island.

"When they turn on the light, they think of the windmills moving and maybe they think, 'We are different than the rest of the world, because we are catching electricity for these windmills and not from conventional engines,'" Armas said.

Most current residents of El Hierro appear to approve of the power plant, though it doesn't lower their electricity bills. Prices for power are still set at a national level for all of Spain, no matter the source of the energy. But by cutting diesel deliveries, the Spanish government saves nearly 2 million euros a year - even after factoring in costs to build and maintain the plant.

And the new power scheme has given this isolated island some energy security - perhaps forever.

"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 Gonzalo Escribano, an energy economist at Madrid's Elcano Royal Institute. "And the price, or the cost to generate an additional gigawatt, will be zero, just very small costs for maintenance."

El Hierro has halted consumption of some 40,000 barrels of oil each year. That's more than 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide that are not being released into the atmosphere.

But officials on El Hierro won't leave it at that. The island's governor is looking ahead, and wants to have all the island's cars be electric by the year 2020.

Related Article:

Spanish Island to be Powered by 100% Renewable Energy

Spanish Island to be Powered by 100% Renewable Energy

Inhabitat, Kristine Lofgren, 05/07/14

A tiny Spanish island with just 10,000 residents is about to do something amazing. El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, plans to completely sever ties with the traditional power grid and move entirely to renewable energy. The island plans to become completely self sufficient next month when its 11.5 megawatt wind farm kicks into gear. El Hierro already has a water turbine that generates electricity, and the added wind power will enable the island to go totally off-grid.

Image via Jose Mesa

We wrote about El Hierro a few years ago when the island announced its plans to move over to renewable energy. In the meantime, the island has been busy at work implementing its ideas and is finally ready to make the shift. Between the water turbines and the new wind farm, the island will have enough power for all of its residential needs – including the water desalinization plants on the island – by the end of next month, with enough extra to ensure electricity even if the wind dies down.

Related: El Hierro: The World’s First Renewable Energy Island… or is It?

The island actually generates enough power for its residential needs with just the water turbines, but the wind power allows El Hierro to have a little extra power, which will be used to pump fresh water from near the harbor on the island to a reservoir in a volcanic crater 2,300-feet above the sea. When there is not enough wind for electricity needs, that water will be released to feed down into the water turbines to generate more energy, so the island will always have enough power to keep things running.

Via ENN

Eigg's renewable energy sources include solar,

 wind, and hydroelectric [Peter Geoghegan/Al Jazeera]

Related Article:

The 'greenest' island in the world?

Off-grid German village banks on wind, sun, pig manure

Yahoo – AFP, Frank Zeller, October 26, 2014

Werner Frohwitter, spokesperson for the "Freier Energieforum Feldheim" association

 stands at the bio gas plant in the energy-sufficient village of Feldheim, 80km south

of Berlin (AFP Photo/Odd Andersen)

Feldheim (Germany) (AFP) - If Germany has taken a pioneering though risky role in shifting to renewable energy, then the tiny village of Feldheim -- population 150 -- is at its vanguard.

The hamlet near Berlin is Germany's first to have left the national grid and switched to 100 percent local, alternative energy, swearing off fossil fuels and nuclear power decades before the rest of the country plans to near the same goal.

A wind turbine operates in Feldheim

(AFP Photo/John Macdougall)

Electricity now comes from a wind park towering over its gently rolling fields and reaches homes through Feldheim's own mini smart grid.

More than 99 percent of the wind power is sold into the national system, along with electricity from a solar park on a former Soviet military base.

As winter nears, people here will heat their homes from a biogas plant powered by local pig and cattle manure and shredded corn, while on the coldest days a woodchip plant will also burn forestry waste.

The villagers took bank loans and state subsidies to build the system, in partnership with green power company Energiequelle, but say it is paying off as electricity and heating bills have been slashed.

Feldheim no longer pays for 160,000 litres (40,000 gallons) of heating oil a year, said Werner Frohwitter of the local energy cooperative.

"This money is no longer going to Arab sheiks or (Russian President) Vladimir Putin," he said at the village 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of Berlin. "This money is now staying right here."

Green vision, risky gamble

Depending on who you listen to, Germany's "Energiewende" or energy shift is a bright green vision for a zero-carbon future or a reckless gamble that will drive Europe's biggest economy against the wall.

It is certainly Germany's biggest infrastructure project since World War II and its greatest national challenge since reunification 25 years ago.

Europe's major export power plans to switch off its last nuclear plant in 2022 and by mid-century meet 80 percent of electricity demand with renewables, up from one quarter now.

A bio gas plant at a farm in Feldheim

(AFP Photo/Odd Andersen)

Windfarms have mushroomed, especially along the gusty northern coast, and solar dishes now cover homes, barns and factories -- all encouraged by state-guaranteed returns for 20 years.

But amid the rapid and often chaotic build-up, the energy shift has been hit by delays, cost overruns and unforeseen consequences.

For one, green surcharges have made power bills the second highest in the EU, worrying businesses that compete internationally, especially as the economy is losing steam.

"The cost of the energy transition for the economy and consumers will continue to rise," Germany's Chemical Industry Association warned this month.

Power companies E.ON, RWE and Vattenfall are meanwhile suing the government for billions in foregone nuclear power profits.

There have also been major technical hitches to building giant offshore windfarms, and local protests have slowed to a crawl the building of high-voltage power lines between Germany's windy north and industrial south.

Future tools

Wind turbines operate near a barley field in

Feldheim (AFP Photo/John Macdougal

The biggest irony has been that the energy shift, intended to slow climate change, has driven up carbon emissions for the past two years.

The problem lies in the fickle nature of renewables. When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, conventional power is needed to fill the gap -- ideally with relatively clean and flexible gas plants.

However, utilities -- which have taken a beating as a glut of renewables has slashed wholesale power prices -- have shuttered some under-utilised gas plants and filled the gap with cheaper and dirtier coal.

This trend has worsened with the collapse of Europe's market for carbon emissions, which was designed to put a cost on environmental damage, but no longer makes it expensive for companies to pollute.

As a result, while clean energy took the top share at 27.7 percent in the year's first nine months, it only narrowly beat lignite coal at 26.3 percent, according to the Agora research institute.

The Neurath coal-fired power plant in 

Rommerskirchen, western Germany

(AFP Photo/Patrik Stollarz)

Chancellor Angela Merkel this month urged reforms to Europe's emissions trading scheme, saying that putting a price on carbon is "the central instrument to fight climate change in Europe".

A range of other future tools are being debated to save the Energiewende, still a broadly popular project backed by all political parties.

Ideas range from paying gas plants to remain on standby for when they are needed, to better home insulation and more electric cars, to creating large energy storage systems using water reservoirs and huge batteries.

Tiny Feldheim, ever proud to be at the cutting edge, has set up an electric car power station and ordered a 10 MW lithium-ion battery from South Korea.

When the giant device arrives next year, it will give the village a 48-hour emergency supply, but that is not its main purpose.

For most of the year it will be rented out to a regional power company as a buffer against grid fluctuations.

Sumba powers up with renewables

Indonesian island hopes to spark green power revolution.

The Star – AFP, Angela Dewan, May 26, 2014

Catch the wind: Villagers erect a windmill on a field of small wind turbines
in Kamanggih, Sumba island, East Nusa Tenggara. — AFP

AN Indonesian family of farmers eat cobs of corn outside their hut under the glow of a light bulb, as the women weave and young men play with mobile phones.

Until two years ago, most people in Kamanggih village on the island of Sumba had no power at all. Now 300 homes have access to 24-hour electricity produced by a small hydroelectric generator in the river nearby.

“We have been using the river for water our whole lives, but we never knew it could give us electricity,” Adriana Lawa Djati said, as 1980s American pop songs drifted from a cassette player inside.

While Indonesia struggles to fuel its fast-growing economy, Sumba is harnessing power from the sun, wind, rivers and even pig dung in a bid to go 100% renewable by 2025.

The ambitious project, called the “Iconic Island“, was started by Dutch development organisation Hivos and is now part of the national government’s strategy to almost double renewables in its energy mix over the next 10 years.

Sumba, in central Indonesia, is an impoverished island of mostly subsistence farmers and fishermen. Access to power has made a huge difference to people like Djati.

“Since we started using electricity, so much has changed. The kids can study at night, I can weave baskets and mats for longer, and sell more at the market” she said.

While only around 30% of Sumba’s 650,000 people have been hooked up to the power grid, more than 50% of electricity used now on the island comes from renewable sources, government data show.

Hivos field co-ordinator Adrianus Lagur hoped the project would be replicated by other islands in the same province of East Nusa Tenggara, one of the country’s poorest.

Indonesia is one of the region’s most poorly electrified nation, partly because it sprawls over 17,000 islands of which more than 6,000 are inhabited.

Despite enjoying economic growth of around 6% annually in recent years, Indonesia is so short of energy that it rolls out scheduled power cuts that cripple entire cities and sometimes parts of the capital.

To keep up with growth, Indonesia is planning to boost its electricity capacity by 60 gigawatts over a 10-year period to 2022. Twenty percent of that is to come from renewable sources.

“Indonesia has been a net importer of oil for years, and our oil reserves are limited, so renewables are an important part of our energy security,” said Mochamad Sofyan, renewable energy chief of state electricity company PLN.

Hefty electricity and fuel subsidies have been a serious burden on the state budget.

But small-scale infrastructure, like mini hydroelectric generators and small wind turbines that power Sumba are not enough to close the national energy gap, even if they were built on all Indonesia’s islands.

Massive hydropower and geothermal projects, which use renewable energy extracted from underground pockets of heat, are needed to really tackle the nationwide problem, said Sofyan.

Indonesia, one of the world’s most seismically active countries, also has the biggest reserves of geothermal, often near its many volcanoes and tectonic plate boundaries. It is considered one of the cleanest forms of energy available.

But geothermal is largely untapped as legislation to open up exploration moves slowly and the industry is bound in red tape.

Sofyan said there is also concern that Sumba’s target to be powered 100% by renewable energy is unrealistic.

“In the long term, we see Sumba still relying somewhat on diesel generators. It will be powered predominantly by renewables, but I don’t think it will be able to switch off the grid,” Sofyan said.

Hivos admits its goal is ambitious, saying it is “inspirational and political” rather than technical but the NGO believes the target may be achievable even in the long term.

Nonetheless the Sumbanese are reaping the benefits of the green energy sources already available, which have lifted a considerable financial burden for many due to reduced costs for wood and oil.

Elisabeth Hadi Rendi, 60, in the town of Waingapu, has been farming pigs since 1975, but it was only two years ago when Hivos visited her home that she came to understand the power of porcine poo. Pigs are commonly kept in Sumba, a predominantly Christian island in Muslim-majority Indonesia.

Each day Rendi shovels dung from the pig pens and churns it in a well, after which it is funnelled to a tank and converted into methane gas. It has saved her household around six million rupiah (RM1,680) in two years, a significant sum for a typical Sumbanese family.

“We also make fertiliser from the waste to use in our garden, where we grow vegetables,” said Rendi. “We eat the vegetables and feed some to the pigs too, which will become biogas again, so the energy literally goes round and round.” — AFP