CTO Assessment - European Commission

TENERIFE
ITER - Renewable
Energies and Bioclimatics
Contact: Manuel Cendagorta • Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables S.A.
(ITER) • Parque Eólico de Granadilla • 38611 San Isidro • Tenerife • Spain
Tel: +34 922 391000 • Fax: +34 922 3910010 • E-mail: iter@iter.rcanaria.es
Website:www.iter.es
ITER (Technology and Renewable Energy
Institute) is nowadays one of the main research
and development centres working
on RET applied to island areas. Among
its activities, an ambitious and complex
project dealing with RE promotion, dissemination
and development has to be emphasised:
a Visitors’ Centre dedicated exclusively
to energy issues, a development
formed of 25 bioclimatic houses, and an
open-air technological walkway for Renewable
Energies, are the highlights of the dissemination
centre that will be inaugurated
in ITER installations on January 9 th 2004.
Main aims and motivations
ITER is a company founded by Cabildo de
Tenerife, the island government. One of its
aims was to promote Renewable Energies
and become a centre of reference on these
issues. Moreover, ITER is a UNESCO Centre
of Excellence for training and dissemination
of RET, with the support of IN-
SULA.
Therefore, this dissemination platform is
a way to achieve a higher impact of awareness
and information to the public at several
levels: children, students, decision
makers, professionals, etc.
Project Detail
The installations work as a whole. Visitors
will begin their visit in the Bioclimatic
Visitors’ Centre, where they will learn
about energy and its impacts with a multimedia
exhibition. The monitoring of the
bioclimatic development also takes place
here, and information will be constantly
displayed in 25 computers. Afterwards, the
visit continues in the Technological Walkway,
where RE technologies are shown and
explained, and the development with the
25 bioclimatic houses.
The rest of installations of ITER, such as
the three wind parks, the PV concentration
plant EUCLIDES, the desalination
plants, the flat PV plant and the wind tunnel
among others, will also be available for
visiting. Another 22 MW wind park is
foreseen for 2004-2005.
Conferences, working meetings, seminars
and other dissemination activities will take
place in the Conference Room of the Visitors’
Centre.
Main Innovative Aspect
The innovative aspect relies on the pioneer
showcase of RET on a single place, with
the necessary infrastructure for dissemination.
All infrastructures to guarantee the
development of promotion and training
activity is associated to the ITER Technological
Centre which includes a wind park
of 30 MW. Another highly innovative aspect
is to open the centre to the tourist
activity.
Regarding the bioclimatic approach of the
development, the trends have evolved to
reduce costs in buildings even if it implies
the addition of expensive, energy-consuming,
and unhealthy conditioned air systems.
A significant number of different solutions
from architects all over the world are proposed,
proving that rational criteria used
during the designing phase can considerably
reduce the energy requirements of the
building. RE implementations considered
incorporate several innovative features as
high efficiency and maximum integration
of PV solar cells and wind power in the
designs. There is no such installation where
25 different dwellings from different architects
from all over the world may be
analysed altogether.
Overall Evaluation
This project has the general purpose to
increase popular knowledge on energy and
renewables, as well as to promote energy
saving by individuals. The project itself may
not contribute to a significant reduction in
energy consumption (besides the production
of the 70 kW PV panels included in
the development), but it is expected that
the energy balance of the village will be
even, without increasing the overall consumption
of the island. Furthermore, as a
demonstration and dissemination project,
it would enable the application of successful
solutions in other buildings in the medium
term.
Challenges
The main challenge has been the large investment
that was done to implement the
idea of the development and other infrastructure
just for demonstration and dissemination
purposes, as well as the planning
for all of the installation to come together
on a limited amount of space.
Replication Potential
Some similar and smaller installations have
been made in other places, some of them
after examining the outcome of the Technological
Walkway at ITER. It is expected
that the enlargement of the dissemination
activities and infrastructure will help for
this experience to be widely spread and
replicated in other areas and countries.
74 CTO - Showcase