The President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Angel Victor Torres; the president of Spanish Electric Network (REE), Beatrice Corridor; the president of the Cabildo de La Gomera, Casimiro Curbelo; the vice president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriaga and the mayoress of Guía de Isora, Josefa Mesa, among other authorities, attended yesterday the first “shovelful” of the works that in two years they will unite through a 36 kilometer submarine cable and more than 1,000 meters deep electrical system of Tenerife and La Gomeradescribed as a “historical milestone”, since it is a work of great depth, due to the difficulty involved in deploying a cable on the seabed that each meter carries a weight of 50 kilos.
The work started yesterday with a trench in Los Pajales, next to the Chío substation, will cost 114 million euros and will allow La Gomera, with its five recently inaugurated wind farms, to “export electricity” to Tenerife by obtaining about 12 megawatts when its demand does not exceed 7 today.
Torres referred in his speech to the fact that with this project, born from inter-administrative collaboration, “a great boost is given to the energy transition on the islands and a commitment to the green transformation and decarbonisation of the Canary Islands”. The president stated that the interconnection between La Gomera and Tenerife “will facilitate the reduction of electricity generation costs and will contribute to reducing foreign dependence on fossil fuels, while producing an environmental improvement on the two islands.”
This initiative in turn contributes to continue advancing in the greater participation of renewable energies in the energy balance of the Canary Islands (energy mix), which in this legislature, from the end of 2018 to 2022, have gone from representing 10.5% to reach 20%, which means that the contribution of clean energy in the Canary Islands energy mix has almost doubled. “A fifth of the electricity consumption on the islands already has a green, renewable, sustainable origin,” Torres stressed.
Beatriz Corredor highlighted the importance of this infrastructure for “its decisive role in advancing in the ecological transition, with critical importance for isolated systems such as the one in the Canary Islands, in which energy autonomy is a guarantee of security for the system as a whole ”.
In this sense, he valued the strategic role that Red Eléctrica is playing in this process in the autonomous community: “Our commitment to Canary Islands society is firm and lasting, as we have been demonstrating with projects of strategic importance such as the submarine link between Lanzarote and Fuerteventura or the Chira-Soria pumping station”.
The Commissioner for the Promotion of Sustainable Energy in Island Systems, Marc Pons, indicated that “the Government of Spain wants to make the archipelagos the spearhead of decarbonization in our country. Territories on which to promote public-private initiatives that are replicable on the continent with the aim of accelerating an energy transition that Spain is leading in Europe and that there is no turning back”.
The president of the Cabildo de La Gomera, Casimiro Curbelo, stressed that the start of the works places the island closer to achieving the objectives set in terms of energy transition, in which this territory works to promote the implementation of renewable energies and provide of greater security to its current energy supply system. In this sense, he specified that, with the commissioning of the five wind farms, next week, it will be possible to generate more energy than is currently consumed by the island and, thanks to the installation of the electrical interconnection, it will be possible to transport that surplus to Tenerife.
The vice-president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriaga, highlighted “the effort that both administrations and companies have been making in recent years to reduce the carbon footprint” and valued “these works that Red Eléctrica is now undertaking”, while the mayoress of Guía de Isora, from La Gomera, Josefa Mesa, stressed “that the future lies in projects like this, which are committed to sustainability and which will benefit both islands and, therefore, the Isorano municipality, by promoting the use of energy renewable”.
cable characteristics
The axis consists of a 66 kV double-circuit line, with a 36-kilometre underwater section and two underground terrestrial ones, which will link the future Chío substation (Guía de Isora) with the new El Palmar electrical substation (San Sebastián de La Slingshot). It is the deepest three-pole alternating submarine link in the world, which is why it has required an adapted cable design, reinforced with lightweight materials capable of withstanding the demanding requirements of the environment in which the cable will be installed. In addition to electricity, it will also transport fiber optics.
Torres bets on Güímar
Ángel Víctor Torres confirmed yesterday that Güímar will be the site of the future hydroelectric power station in Tenerife, in which both the Government of Spain and the president of Red Eléctrica, Beatriz Corredor, agree. The Güímar power plant, an investment of “hundreds of millions” -it is said that it could reach 800 million- will be added to the one that already works in Gorona del Viento (El Hierro) and the one that is underway in Chira-Soria (Gran Canaria), within the framework of the Canarian Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030. “We propose a reasonable, logical and operational energy solution”, which requires a waterfall and a storage plant in Güímar, although its location in the quarries is pending still from the judicial process of the ‘Áridos case’.
