El Hierro third quarter 2018 performance update
In 3Q 2018 Gorona del Viento (GdV) supplied 74.2 % of El Hierro’s electricity (95.4% in July) and 17.1% of its total energy consumption, up from 64.2% % and 14.8% in 2Q 2018. Since project startup in June 2015 GdV has supplied 46.5% of El Hierro’s electricity and 10.7% of its energy. In 3Q 2018 GdV supplied 100% of El Hierro’s electricity for a total of 45.6 days, with 18 days of continuous 100% generation during a sustained period of high winds from July 15 to August 1. Hydro continued to underperform, contributing only 6.1% of total 3Q generation. According to GdV the plant is now performing at its optimum level but is still not capable of supplying El Hierro with 100% renewable electricity – an admission of failure. Adding solar panels, enlarging the lower reservoir and EV storage are among the options now being considered.
Performance since project start-up:
Figure 1 shows daily mean percent renewables generation since full operations began on June 27, 2015. The data are from Red Eléctrica de España (REE):
Figure 1: Daily average percentages of diesel & renewables (wind plus hydro) sent to the El Hierro grid since startup. The black lozenges show monthly means
The Table below updates the monthly grid statistics since project startup on June 27, 2015 through September 30, 2018:
Third Quarter 2018 performance:
Figure 2 plots the REE 10-minute generation data for July, August and September 2018:
Figure 2: Total generation by source, 3Q 2018, ten-minute REE data
During July, August and September 2018 the 11.5 MW wind farm generated a total of 12,701 MWh, representing a remarkably high capacity factor of 71.9%. Because of inadequate storage, however, only 67% (8,456 MWh) of this generation was delivered to the grid. And although these were the best three consecutive wind months so far recorded at GdV total wind generation still only just filled El Hierro’s demand (12,288 MWh) over the quarter, once again confirming that the wind farm is undersized.
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