Spanish wind sector welcomes energy reforms
CHRISTOPHER HOPSON
S
pains long-suffering
wind industry has given
a big welcome to major
government reforms of the
electricity sector, designed to
encourage the wider deployment
of renewables, while rolling back
many of the restrictions imposed
by the previous administration.
Teresa Ribera, Spains minister
for ecological transition, this week
announced sweeping electricity
market reforms, including
measures to change outdated
price-setting mechanisms because
of their negative impact on both
investors and consumers.
Heikki Willstedt Mesa, director
of energy policy at the Spanish
Wind Energy Association (AEE),
told Recharge at the Global
Wind Summit that it welcomed
the reforms because finally
there is a minister in Spain who
understands that the right policies
need to be in place to achieve
stated objectives.
In this case, the objectives are
quite ambitious, because Ribera
has said at least 32% of energy has
Spains minister
for ecological
transition, Teresa
Ribera
to come from renewables in Spain
by 2030. But they might go for an
even higher target, and together
with other associations we are
discussing what that might be.
Ribera said with a €100bn
($117m) investment in renewable
generation and increased storage
capacity, Spain could obtain a
saving of around €400bn on
consumers electricity bills and
meet its 32% EU renewables
target by 2030.
She said it was important for
Spain to reverse the damage to
investor confidence created by the
unilateral changes to renewables
tariffs made in 2013 by the
previous government of prime
minister Mariano Rajoy.
Willstedt Mesa said the
government wants to promote
the use of long-term corporate
power-purchase agreements
(PPAs) in order to shift a large
percentage of energy out of the
wholesale electricity market.
The situation in Spain is very
conducive to the introduction
of these types of contracts as
wholesale prices have gone up, so
big industrial players are looking
at these PPAs so they can hedge
against an increase in the cost of
electricity.
The AEE has welcomed
government plans to encourage
the repowering of older wind
farms and for developers to
be granted time extensions for
projects held up by bureaucratic
obstacles.
Most of the installations from
recent renewables auctions held
in 2016 and 2017 will be built
next year, but their permits were
due to expire before they could be
built so it was very important
these permits were extended for a
couple of years.
Ribera plans to scrap a 7% tax
on electricity production from all
types of technologies, introduced
by the previous administration.
This tax is going to be suspended
next week.
She has also announced
plans to remove the barriers to
self-generation in Spain by
scrapping the so-called solar tax
also introduced by the previous
administration.
Turbine availability significantly reduced after 10 years in operation
Photograph AFP/Getty
ANDREW LEE
7
Onshore turbines show
significant reduction in
availability after ten years of
operation, with later-life failures
resulting in significantly more
downtime than earlier in their
lifecycle, latest data from wind
rechargenews.com
benchmarking specialist WEBS
shows.
WEBS looked at performance
metrics from 22 appropriately
aged operating onshore wind
farms to explore the impact of
age on performance, revealing a
bathtub curve with high failure
rates at the start and end of life.
However, the failures later in
life have much more downtime
associated with each outage, said
its latest report.
Consequently, older
wind farms are experiencing
significantly more unforeseen
downtime and this is driving the
major reduction in availability
in the latter half of life.
WEBS, which provides
anonymised data from leading
international onshore wind farms
added that its sample group
showed relatively stable rates of
availability across the year, while
capacity factor averaged 29% and
peaked at 37% in Q4 2017.
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Spanish wind sector welcomes energy reforms CHRISTOPHER HOPSON S pains long-suffering wind industry has given a big welcome to major government reforms of the electricity sector, designed to encourage the wider deployment of renewables, while rolling back many of the restrictions imposed by the pr
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