The electricity company Iberdrola has expressed “its commitment to collaborate with the Technological Institute of Renewable Energies (ITER)” of Tenerife and has assured that it is already working so that the Areté (18.4 MW) and La Roca (16.8 MW) parks ), owned by ITER (a company belonging to the Island Council), can produce energy again in the coming days. These wind farms have been without activity since a fault occurred on August 8.
Iberdrola has explained to this newspaper that it hopes to resolve this week the failure that occurred in the Tenerife Ecological Energies (EET) substation, where the utility participates with dozens of small businessmen from the Canary Islands, associated with IFIT.
However, it points out that said failure has been derived from “maintenance problems in the connection facility managed by ITER”. In fact, the Granadilla substation also provides a service to the Chimiche II wind farm, owned by EET, which “has operated normally at all times,” say company sources.
Within said substation there are common infrastructures and individual infrastructures of each promoter. Through an infrastructure maintenance agreement signed between ITER and EET, Iberdrola is in charge of maintaining the common area, he stresses, but adds that “it is the obligation of each developer to maintain their own infrastructures.”
Iberdrola assures that “it is the lack of maintenance of ITER’s own infrastructures that has caused up to 11 shots since 2019, ending up affecting the substation itself.” In addition, he points out that on this issue he has warned repeatedly in the last three years.
The utility adds that EET at all times since the construction and start-up of the parks “has provided all possible collaboration to the public entity ITER, a collaboration that already allowed ITER to energize the park within the established period to be able to opt to the FEDER aid available to these facilities”.
The Cabildo de Tenerife, however, has demanded that Iberdorla repair “immediately” the Granadilla de Abona substation, where the fault occurred on August 8. The island institution assured last week that ITER verified that “the problem was not related to the operation of the wind turbines” and that an expert opinion at the electrical substation determined that “technical problems must be resolved by Iberdrola.” This has already communicated that it is trying to resolve the failure, but stresses that it was due to the “lack of maintenance in the connection facility managed by ITER”.
