The furthest eastern Canary Island is launching an innovative wind-power system that will make the island fully energy self-sufficient by 2015

For almost thirty years, the ten thousand islanders living there have relied on diesel fuel to power their generators.

President of the Island Council Tomás Padrón said  "At first, it was simply an issue of becoming more self-sufficient ... we were completely dependent on outside deliveries and could be cut off at a moment’s notice. But then with the global energy crisis, and climate change, and everything else that’s happened, we've realized it has a lot more value.”

For several years the island has been thinking about how to move away from fossil fuels, by building a hydro-eolic plant to produce hydro and wind energy.

Five windmills on the north east side of the island will power a pumping station which pumps water from a reservoir on the lower side of the island, to a much larger one burrowed in one of El Hierro’s volcanic craters.

When the wind is not blowing, the top reservoir will release water onto the lower reservoir, and the pressure of that falling water, will power six hydraulic turbines, so in any kind of weather, the plant will be expected to provide the island with 48 GW/h (gigawatt hours) of energy, enabling the island to save a yearly 6,000 tons of diesel.

This project alone will enable the island to meet 100% of its energy needs by 2015, but well before that date, El Hierro will have cemented several other sustainability projects; the island is largely agricultural, and a leader in converting to organic farming, as well as creating “biodigesting” projects, which aims to convert sewage into methane and fertilizers. The island is also planning to make most of their vehicles electric (powered by excess energy from the plant).

"The whole system will be integrated," says Javier Morales, El Hierro’s councilman for sustainability. "It’s beyond green. When the power plant and the car system interact, it will be like galaxies colliding."

Source: www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com