Actions Are Being Developed to Produce Wind Energy in Tierra del Fuego
Actions Are Being Developed to Produce Wind Energy in Tierra del Fuego
This week, the “ENERGAT Fuego”, a public-private Consortium, composed by the National University of Tierra del Fuego (UNTDF, as per its Spanish acronym) and the Cooperativa Eléctrica de Río Grande (Río Grande Electric Cooperative), carried out a new business meeting. Both parts informed about the progress with “Wind Energy in Tierra del Fuego” project.
During that meeting, the Cooperativa Eléctrica informed about the purchase of a wind generator with a 30 Kw horizontal axis. This is already available in the province and will have been installed before the end of the year in the city of Río Grande. The objective will be to face up to a first experience to assess the feasibility to produce wind energy at a high scale.
In turn, the UNTDF informed about the purchase of other wind generator with a same power horizontal axis to be installed in the city of Ushuaia, apart from two other wind generators with a lower power to be located in the rural area of the province. These equipments are expected to arrive during next days.
This equipment could be got with a 13 million pesos funding contributed by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Cientifica y Tecnologíca (National Agency of Scientific and Technological Promotion), through the Fondo Argentino Sectorial (FONARSEC) (Sectorial Argentine Fund) after the approval of the project presented by the UNTDF. Generators will be essential for the development of a new stage which objective is to assess wind generators performance under our province climate conditions. This task will be undertaken by researcher professors from the Instituto de Desarrollo Económico e Innovación (IDEI) (Institute of Economic Development and Innovation) and the UNTDF.
It is important to remark the interest on the part of the Cooperativa Eléctrica. Since the year 2009, it has been undertaking studies on wind potential and profiles that have become the bases for this project. Regarding this issue, it is important to mention the Wind Potential map available in Tierra del Fuego where wind occurrence is the best to produce wind power at a high scale, particularly in the North area.
Finally, Nidia Benítez, a coordinator at Río Grande, and a member of the Consortium Board, commented the following: “during the business meeting with the Cooperativa, we were talking about the possibility of arranging some special community-opened activities to get consciousness and information about the benefits and feasibility of wind energy in Tierra del Fuego”.
