Wind Power in Spain - Future Development

Future Development

Three factors will control the further progress of wind power development in Spain: the capability of the wind farms network to hold all the electricity harnessed by wind power, predominantly in off-peak times, the cost of energy, and the environmental effect that the abundance of wind farm development in Spain could turn out. The Spanish wind power industry will be confronted with the following issues in the immediate future:

• formulating its development to be congruent with required supply agreements by the national electricity supply operator
• guaranteeing that the installation of wind farms occurs with recognition of the environment
• synchronizing wind power development of the 17 autonomous regions
• trimming down the investment costs to acquire sufficient returns with declining energy prices in the upcoming years.

It is also noteworthy that the supportive Spanish policies for wind power development have resulted in severe competition for construction sites among major companies. Political leaders in the autonomous communities have been frazzled by the numerous applications for wind farm construction. Local possession of wind power is not present in Spain, but does not appear to take away from further development of wind power in Spain since a much smaller and weaker quantity of local anti-wind farm grid population inhabits the country.

However, a further obstacle concerning wind power development needs to be tackled before Spain can achieve these ambitious objectives: construction of a central control center for all the Spanish wind farms, analogous to the control center used for traditional power plants.