Greece has granted strategic investment status to Terna Energy’s plan to combine wind and hydropower with pump storage. The warehouse in Amari in Crete will enable the largest island in the country to use its significant renewable energy capacity.
The Inter-Ministerial Committee for Strategic Investments of Greece accepted the applications of the developers of two projects to the state agency Enterprise Greece, granting them the status of strategic investments at the national level. Their total value is 1.2 billion euros, most of which refers to Microsoft’s data centers. The other, worth 240 million euros, was submitted by Terna Energy.
The company, which is part of the GEK Terna conglomerate, wants to install a wind farm and a hydropower system with a pumping reservoir in the Amari area of Crete and integrate them by creating a so-called hybrid power plant. Such a facility would enable the largest island in the country to use significant renewable energy capacity.
The wind farm in the Amari hybrid plant should supply a system that pumps water into the upper energy storage tank
The production of solar and wind farms is interrupted, because changes in weather conditions are mostly unpredictable, so storage is necessary to balance the power system. Also, using stored energy during peak hours is cheaper.
Crete is still largely dependent on oil power plants, although the situation has changed with the first interconnection with mainland Greece, and several more underwater connection projects are underway.
Amari will have 227 MW of guaranteed power
The wind energy segment of Terna Energy’s project consists of 26 turbines, the Ministry of Development and Investment said, adding that the entire project will create 110 full-time jobs annually. According to the company’s website, the pumping units will be powered exclusively by the City wind farm, which will have a capacity of 89.1 MW.
It is planned that the pumping system will be installed underground at the location of the existing reservoir of the Potamoi dam. It will consist of three 31 MW pump turbines and twelve 3.2 MW variable pumps.
On the summary page of the Terna Energy project, it states that the total capacity of the pumping system is 72 MW.
According to the company’s blog, the system is planned to consist of a hydroelectric power plant up to 93 MW and a pumping complex of 140 MW.
This would provide a guaranteed power of 227 MW in the Crete system, which covers a significant part of the island’s needs, according to Terna Energy.
Terna announced that it will build an upper reservoir with a capacity of 1.2 million cubic meters. The entire investment is estimated at 280 million euros, according to the blog.
Source: balkangreenenergynews.com
