Lanzarote and La Graciosa already have their five wind farms operating at full capacity, which together generate a total power of 40.7 megawatts, which means facing, in specific periods, 35% of the electricity demand consumed in the island territory.
The General Directorate of Energy, dependent on the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Energy of the Government of the Canary Islands, issued on June 20 the resolution for the definitive commissioning of the San Bartolomé Wind Farm after successfully passing the test operation period.
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, wanted to emphasize that "this government group does not work with flags but with management and facts. All the wind energy that we have deployed in Lanzarote and La Graciosa is operating at full capacity. Never has so much clean energy been poured into the grid as at this moment."
The Cabildo of Lanzarote, through Insular de Aguas de Lanzarote, S.A., Inalsa, received last week, after the final resolution of the General Directorate of Energy of the Government of the Canary Islands, the San Bartolomé wind farm in the El Monte area of the aforementioned municipality, a park that has a power of 9.2 megawatts.
The installation, supply and maintenance of the San Bartolomé wind farm was awarded in June 2022 to the company Elecnor, the same one that executed the Teguise I and Arrecife parks, with a budget of almost 12 million euros of investment through the financing of the FDCAN, Canary Islands Development Fund.
The Councilor for Wind Energy of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Domingo Cejas, after visiting the Wind Farm, recalled that "the four mills of this park were stored in the Port of Los Mármoles during the last year of the past legislature because no one knew how to resolve the negative environmental report that it had from the Government of the Canary Islands. We got to work and now we have complied with all the requirements and the wind turbines do not stop working."
For her part, the vice president and head of the Planning and Project Coordination Area, María Jesús Tovar, assured that this commissioning "is a before and after in the sustainable energy of our island." "From the area we believed it necessary to finance projects that bet on a transition towards renewable energies. For this reason, we invested close to 14 million euros through the FDCAN Funds so that this would become a reality," she added.
Maintenance in all wind farms
Lanzarote currently has the Arrecife, Teguise I, San Bartolomé, Punta Grande and Los Valles wind farms in operation, "three of which we have maintenance contracts that have expired and without taking out new tenders," adds Cejas, currently adding a total wind power of 40.7 megawatts.
The Arrecife, San Bartolomé and Los Valles parks have their maintenance contracts in force for the coming years with the company Enercon in the case of the first two, and with the company Gamesa in the case of Los Valles.
In those of Punta Grande and Teguise I, the scheduled annual maintenance is being carried out, as well as the necessary corrective maintenance until the new contracts are awarded, after the two previous tenders carried out have been unsuccessful.
From the Wind Energy Area of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, it is being studied for the future, once the maintenance contracts for Punta Grande and Teguise I are awarded, that the tenders for the maintenance of the wind turbines, when the current contracts expire, bring together several parks in the same contract that makes the award more attractive for companies in the sector.
