The Cañada Blanca Visitors Center, in the Teide National Parkmanaged by the Cabildo de Tenerife, will be supplied with photovoltaic solar energy as an alternative renewable energy source has been installed in it from an isolated hybrid photovoltaic installation in which a total of 249,684 euros was invested.
This center was inaugurated in June 2022 after being closed for 15 years, and due to its location it is isolated from the Electrical Distribution Network, so it was supplied with energy from the use of a 300 kVA generator set. In other words, it was based on the consumption of fossil fuels (diesel) and represented a significant handicap at an economic and sustainability level.
In order to achieve greater energy independence from fossil fuels, the Teide National Park commissioned the drafting of a technical project to provide the center with an alternative renewable energy source.
This project developed a technical solution based on the installation of 108 photovoltaic panels on the center’s roofs, associated with four 10 kW power inverters each, complemented by an energy storage system of 123 kWh in total. The configuration of this system allows the storage batteries to be self-supplied and recharged at the same time in order to take advantage of all the excess potential at the necessary times, and to be able to achieve a high degree of self-consumption.
With these two installations, the photovoltaic generation and the battery storage system, it is possible to have enough energy to cover the total installed power of the center (111 kW). In addition, the batteries have the capacity to supply the center for two hours.
The photovoltaic installation has been carried out on two roof areas in which a shadow study has been carried out to guarantee the minimum hours of production necessary on the worst days of the year in terms of insolation.
With the execution of this project, since last March, a high degree of energy self-sufficiency has been achieved, leaving the generator set relegated to an emergency group for exceptional situations, thus contributing to achieving the commitments acquired by the National Park del Teide in terms of sustainability, energy saving and reduction of polluting emissions into the atmosphere.
Located in the Teide National Park, and very close to the emblematic Roques de García complex, the Cañada Blanca Visitor Center, adjacent to the Las Cañadas del Teide Parador building, closed its doors to the public in 2007 to begin various improvements and it reopened them in June 2022 to offer the visitor, in an area of about 1,000 square meters, an exhibition that deals with the human presence in the peaks of Tenerife.
