The rafts of Tenerife, as of February 21 of this year, there is 60 percent of storage and supply coming, fundamentally, from reclaimed and desalinated water. This percentage is the second best data of the last decade in these facilities belonging to Balsas de Tenerife (Balten)according to the records of this entity.
These data have been released at a press conference in which the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, has intervened; the island councilor for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Javier Parrilla, and the manager of Balten, Ana Sánchez, in which the Balten Energy Rebalancing Plan was also presented.
The president of the Cabildo stressed that despite a weather situation that “does not accompany at all”, with a “accentuated” decrease in rainfall in this last decade, the good data of the reservoirs of the Island continue and the logical benefit that it represents for the Tenerife countryside.
Peter Martin He explained that last year a total volume of 19.2 million cubic meters of irrigation water was made available to the primary sector, which allowed an increase of just over 6 percent in the contribution of water available to the sector in relation to the previous year, the largest amount of water supplied and stored. According to the president, this is a fact that goes along the lines that the Agriculture Area has been implementing, with the intention that Balten continue to be a “true lung of oxygen” for the island’s agricultural sector.
Martin pointed out that These levels in the rafts of Tenerife have been reached thanks to the “great boost” that the Cabildo is giving to reclaimed water. Thus, he indicated that of the 19.2 million cubic meters supplied last year, 10.5 million were regenerated water, that is to say, that passes through the treatment plants and has been improved and optimized to be able to supply top quality water to farmers.
The island president stressed that the purification effort has been important and will multiply exponentially in the coming years, when the five major projects that are currently being worked on in Tenerife come into operation, and that they will achieve “put much more purified water in the system and that we can look with optimism at the water capacities of Tenerife”.
All these purification processes, desalination of seawater and desalination of purified water have high energy consumption. In fact, the Cabildo’s spending on electricity consumption in water treatment for agriculture went from 2.5 to 5.5 million euros, and the initial forecast for this year is that the electricity bill exceeds 6.8 million euros. euros due to the market situation.
Energy rebalancing plan
The island councilor for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Javier Parrilla, explained that in order to reduce these costs, the Balten Energy Rebalancing Plan has been launched, which has a global investment of 1.5 million euros in three actions, in principle a pilot action and two phases, which will generate a final power of 4,107 megawatts/hour per year.
The manager of Balten, Ana Sánchez, pointed out that phase 1 of the Balten Energy Rebalancing Plan is associated with the large hydraulic complexes with the highest energy consumption, such as the Valle San Lorenzo and Isla Baja hydraulic complexes, where they will invest some 740,000 euros for the installation of photovoltaic panels, which will mean an estimated saving of 143,000 euros per year, and in the El Tablero deposit and the Santa Cruz Pumping Station, where some 150,000 euros will be invested and savings of 50,000 are expected. euros per year.
The second phase will take place at the Balten headquarters in Santa Cruz, at the San Antonio Raft, at the Cruz Santa Raft and at Mesa Mota. The sum of these projects represents an investment of around 320,000 euros and an estimated annual saving of 93,650 euros.
The Plan also contemplates the start-up of a pilot project in the San Antonio Basin, which consists of the installation of floating photovoltaic panels, which entails a series of advantages, since it reduces the possible evaporation of the water in the basin by 33 %; uses sheets of water with no apparent use; controls algae growth; reduces civil works and maintenance, and minimizes investment on the ground.
