SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 5 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Demarcation of Santa Cruz de Tenerife of the College of Civil Engineers, Canals and Ports (CICCP) has organized a debate forum on March 8, between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., with which it is intended to discuss the need for the Canary Islands have to have energy storage spaces.
The event will be attended by the Minister of Ecological Transition, the Fight Against Climate Change and Territorial Planning, José Antonio Valbuena, as well as representatives of entities and companies such as Red Eléctrica, Spancold, as well as members of the College itself.
The high dependence on fossil fuels, the energy transition process in which Europe is immersed and the high costs of imported energy after the conflict in Ukraine make energy storage a fundamental aspect in order not to waste the surplus of green energy that they generate. In addition, having spaces that store energy would also reduce the price of the electricity bill in homes and businesses, while drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Soraya Manjón, vice dean of the College of Civil, Canal and Port Engineers, comments that “producing clean energy is of no use if the energy supply does not match the demand. If what is produced is not consumed, the surplus is lost, For this reason, the search for solutions where the excess clean energy produced is accumulated is essential, and one of the great challenges that any energy strategy must face, and more so in island territories such as the Canary Islands, where we also have the condition of a double insularity, and of an outermost region”.
In this sense, the energy storage strategy for the Canary Islands can be analyzed from three points of view, which are storage at the user level, distributed storage and large-scale storage. It is in the latter that the objective is to take advantage of the existing dams and reservoirs using reversible hydroelectric pumping systems, pumping water to higher levels when there is a surplus to subsequently produce energy by hydraulic jump when necessary. In this way the energy is transformed and not lost.
In the case of the western province, this storage system is the one proposed for Tenerife and La Palma. This last island, unlike La Gomera, does not have any interconnection option, so a reversible pumping hydraulic system to store energy is essential to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. La Gomera, for its part, has the future development of the submarine cable and its interconnection with Tenerife, and El Hierro already has Gorona del Viento.
According to the Dean of Tenerife, Luís Pintor Sepúlveda, “the purpose of the Debate Forum on March 8 is to analyze energy storage initiatives in the Canary Islands with the aim of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and improving the energy efficiency of the region, something that we understand is only possible through energy storage”.
