An island company has opened the process to install the first offshore wind farm in the province. The Port Authority has opened the procedure after receiving the request for an administrative concession for the occupation of 619,750 square meters in the sea off the coasts of Granadilla and Arico, under the authority of the entity, as well as 5,300 square meters of seabed and 1,375 of subsoil. The request comes from the company Parque Eólico Marino Granadilla SL and if it goes ahead it would mean a great advance in the penetration of renewable energies on the Island.
In the Canary Islands there is only one wind power wind turbine at sea, that of Plocan in Gran Canaria
The announcement of the opening of the procedure has just been published in the Official State Gazette (BOE). In this way, the so-called project competition procedure begins so that within a month, entities and individuals who may be interested present other requests for concession of public domain that, being located in the same port public domain, belonging to the dock industrial Granadilla de Abona, have the same or different purpose. Is he first major off shore wind farm project presented in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The wind turbines would be installed, as reflected in the company’s project, in two spaces in the sea located in front of Las Maretas and San Miguel de Tajao, two towns in the municipality of Arico, in the south of the island.
While no wind turbine has yet been installed in the sea in Tenerife, there is already one in Gran Canaria. It was the first in Spain and even has a name: Elisa. It has been in the testing area of the Canary Islands Oceanic Platform (Plocan) since 2018. Each of the blades of this wind turbine measure more than the wingspan of a Boeing 747 airplane. The wind turbine tower together with the height of the blade make a total of 160 meters, that is, 45 meters more than the Kio Towers in Madrid. “A true titan of the winds”, as highlighted in a report by the technological digital magazine Xataca.
The Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has been wanting for years to develop a project to house a marine wind farm in the areas under its jurisdiction of the Port of Granadilla. Those responsible consider that the coasts of Granadilla and Arico meet the ideal conditions due to the strong gusts of wind that blow most of the year to take advantage of them and obtain energy. It is also a clean energy sector that is beginning to position itself as one of those with the most future in the short and medium term in countries like Spain.
The Port Authority of the province opens the competition procedure
Spain has just approved its roadmap for the development of offshore wind and marine energy. The Minister councilAt the proposal of the Ministry for Ecological Transition, it was approved on December 10. It is a strategy to enhance Spanish leadership in the technological development of the different clean sources that take advantage of natural marine resources, with special attention to wind energy. It also guarantees the orderly deployment of the facilities in territorial waters, so that it is respectful with the environment, compatible with other uses and activities and is used to improve knowledge of the marine environment.
The strategy includes 20 lines of action with the objective of reaching between 1 and 3 GW of floating offshore wind power by 2030 –Up to 40% of the EU target for the end of the decade– and up to 60 MW from other marine energies in the pre-commercial phase, such as waves or tides. At least 200 million euros will be enabled until 2023 and the needs of the port infrastructure will be evaluated, where 500 to 1,000 million must be invested to cover the new logistics needs.
Wind energy is one of the bastions of the energy transition in the Canary Islands towards less polluting sources. The generation capacity of wind technology, together with photovoltaics, has allowed generation from renewable sources in the Archipelago to have accounted for 16% in 2021.
