Saitec company has installed in open waters, specifically in the Abra del Sardinero due to its protected conditions of waves, a floating wind platform that it has developed on a reduced scale, which is a milestone as it is the first prototype of this company installed in the sea in mainland Spain (there are two others in the Canary Islands) that will be used to generate renewable energy through an offshore wind buoy.
“Suffice it to say that only one wind turbine produces wind energy for 15,000 homes, that is, it is a commitment to the future that will undoubtedly have a very important market and that is the result of the work of people from Cantabria and the Basque Country”, has assured the president of the region, Miguel Ángel Revilla.
And he pointed out that the world is going “irreversibly” towards the path of renewable energies, which is why he claims to “feel proud” that there are people in the region who are working on this evolution because we have to bet on energy production to replace coal, oil or gas and “in Cantabria there is a future.”
In addition, he recalled that there is an Iberdrola project to install the “largest wind farm in the Cantabrian Sea” in the Escudo area, as well as Repsol’s project to increase hydroelectric production by 1,000 more megawatts in Aguayo.
For his part, the Minister of Innovation and Industry, Francisco Martín, stressed that the project is in the prototype phases, phases of “higher risk” where companies have to take risks and invest and has ensured that, in this case, this It happens in Cantabria thanks to the Hydraulic Institute, Sodercán and because 10 Cantabrian companies have been able to collaborate and develop technologies that “did not exist before.”
“This obviously has a very important addition, we are talking about more than 2 million euros invested, co-financed by the European Union, which would surely have gone to other places if Cantabria had not shown that it has that vocation of specialization”, added Martín in statements to the media after the launch of the experimental buoy.
The platform, whose patent was born in 2012 and which has been in development for eight years, will be at the Abra del Sardinero for a year, although that time will also depend on future steps and possible future reuse of the platform but “the idea is to test it here Due to the conditions, although it is a real environment, it is a somewhat scaled environment that will allow us to test a platform and all its behavior 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ”said Saitec’s technical director, David Carrascosa.
And he has assured that it is a “milestone” because it is the ninth technology installed in the world, the third based on the concrete structure and has indicated that they are “very happy” to be able to celebrate this day since it has been delayed quite a bit by the The coronavirus health crisis, because three days before the confinement they had the structure floating so they have been able to do a “good tightness test.”
Carrascosa explained that the technical development began at the hands of the Institute of Hydraulics (IH) of Cantabria, later they collaborated with several companies in Cantabria in a project financed by Sodercán and did tests again at the IH and now, with the installation of this platform, is the “final” step of tank tests, laboratory tests, to go to real conditions.
It is a project that has a Cantabrian presence since up to 10 companies in Cantabria are collaborating in this project, so that 70% of the financing of this project will cover contracts in the region, one of the points that want to demonstrate that this type of energies since it implies a “very high” local content and they are “very interesting” when it comes to generating employment.
