Investment TC-C14-i03

The government of the Azores Autonomous Region (AAR) aims to promote investment in the energy transition in the AAR, particularly through projects that will increase the share of electricity generated from renewable sources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing energy dependency and improving energy supply security.

The goal is to develop state-of-the-art infrastructures, implement projects with innovative solutions and obtain relevant technical knowledge, enabling an increase in energy self-sufficiency through:

•  Increasing the installed renewable generation capacity (particularly in geothermal energy);
•  Integration of energy storage systems and the provision of system services to the grid, to introduce greater energy management flexibility and allow security and quality of supply to be guaranteed while decarbonising the sector;
•  Decentralised generation through the use of equipment that uses energy generated from renewable resources and distributed storage, allowing the user to store the clean energy they have generated in order to use it when necessary (when it is not possible to generate energy from renewable sources).

To this end, the following types of investment were defined:

•  Increase in installed geothermal generating capacity: investment in the increase and revitalisation of useful installed electric power generated from geothermal energy to 17 MW, which will allow an increase in the decarbonisation of the electricity sector through the increase of clean energy by substituting part of the fossil-based thermal energy, to be achieved through the installation of a 5 MW generating set at the Ribeira Grande Geothermal Power Station and the expansion of the Pico Vermelho and Pico Alto geothermal power stations;
•  Corvo Renewable – Increasing the installed capacity in renewable electricity generation on the island of Corvo to 850 kW, without compromising the stability and security of the electricity system: an investment that will allow the integration of electricity generation from renewable sources with the aim of achieving high rates of renewable generation through the installation of a wind farm and a solar farm and the operation of the electricity system without a thermal component when there is an abundant availability of renewable resources, with the help of an energy storage system to be installed as part of another project;
•  Installation of electricity storage systems on the AAR’s six remaining islands, to increase the capacity for integrating renewable energy: an investment that will allow the strengthening of electricity systems with solutions to provide system and auxiliary services with a grid-forming capacity (voltage and frequency control) to the grid to reduce significantly the use of thermal groups (fossil fuels) and allow greater integration of renewables while safeguarding supply security and quality of service;
•  Increase installed capacity by 12.6 MW, through investment in electrification, decentralised generation and distributed storage, with a view to the energy transition: investment in electrification, decentralised generation and distributed storage, with this investment allowing the end user to go from being a final consumer to an active agent in the energy system, with the possibility of consuming, storing and generating, offering assistance to the grid.