Industrial Energy Community powered by Renewable Energies in the Arinaga Industrial Area (Spain) (ARINDEC - GRAN CANARIA) is a project supported by NESOI European Islands Facility managed by our partners from CIRCE and promoted by the "Consejo Insular de la Energía de Gran Canaria (CIEGC)" (In English: Insular Energy Council).
WHAT IS ARINDEC-GRAN CANARIA?
Arinaga Industrial Park in the island of Gran Canaria was created in 1972 and gathers more than 600 companies in a surface of six million square meters. In this setting, it made sense to strive for the creation of an industrial energy community in which the energy is locally generated, stored and consumed.
This idea had a big item to develop that is, a local energy market. This will serve to maximise the efficiency of the energy community, by the creation of a fair market that would reduce the disagreements among its members.
The aim is that, following the interest on energy communities by the European Union, to become a flagship project for similar initiatives. What is more, ARINDEC-GRAN CANARIA is currently expecting more investment to keep growing its services.
Energy communities: what are they?
Energy Communities organise citizen actions that contribute to the clean energy transition, advancing energy efficiency and moving citizens to the spotlight. One of the main objectives is to raise awareness about renewable energy policies and developments, while providing direct benefits (financial and societal) to the people participating in it.
The European Commission is putting a lot of effort in the fostering of this instrument as seen in the successive policies in this regard, that kickstarted with the Clean Energy for all Europeans package adopted in 2019.
The energy community of ARINDEC-GRAN CANARIA is thus, an ambitious project of a total value of EUR 25 million that will represent an energy demand of 32GWh/ year with the following sections: a renewable energy generation system (PV panels supplemented by wind turbines); an energy storage system (lithium-ion batteries); a virtual management system (see the energy flows to manage the energy market); and a set of own governance rules (in line with national regulation)
How does NESOI support this project?
This project has a few challenges that are difficult to solve. As Mr. Alexis Lozano (Cabildo de Canarias) and Mr. Rayco Parra (Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias – ITC) stated on an interview: “A specific regulation on energy communities is needed to allow the implementation of all the functionalities that an energy Community should have according to the European Directives”.
NESOI European Islands Facility has contributed to the project though advisory services that have helped defining the technology and software necessary for the well management of the energy supply and demand, ensuring that the financial parameters are correctly established at all times.
In particular, the following support has been provided:
- Definition of the required environmental permitting procedures
- Cost-Benefit analysis and socio-economic and environmental impact evaluation
- Risk analysis, identification of available mitigation strategies and assessment of procurement options
- Basic Blockchain PoC from synthetic data for virtual markets
- Evaluation of key information for the deployment of renewable generation
- Action plan, identification of project monitoring procedures and preparation of the project financing plan
- Load Flow and grid capacity studies, dynamic stability studies
- Design of the technological architecture required for the management of the community