The idea of building a wind farm in Portugal grew in 1990 in the fertile minds of a group of Danish businessmen, one of whom had visited Melides in Portugal. The Portuguese coast, exposed to winds from the west, appeared to him to be a good site for a wind farm.

A seven hectare site was chosen on Monte Chaos, a hill some 100 m high situated 3 km from the sea at Sines. The land is owned by the local authorities and the technology and expertise were provided by a private company (Aerogeradores de Portugal S.A.). Work began in April 1991 and six months later, the first wind turbines stood proudly facing the sea.

Today, the entire wind farm is operational. It consists of 12 Wind World W-2800 turbines made in Denmark. They obtained their national certification at the RISO metrology station in Denmark and they will last for at least 20 years. Each turbine is 31 m high and has a rotation diameter of 28 m, which means that each blade sweeps 612 m2 of air, giving a total of 7 344 m2 for the farm as a whole.

The turbines are distributed in three groups of four. They are interconnected and are managed using a fibre optics system. This leading edge technology makes it possible to command and control the turbines from a distance, even from as far away as Denmark, since the system operates across more than 3 000 kms.

The wind farm generates a current of 380 volts collected by three transformer stations. There, the voltage is converted into 15 000 volts and injected into the network managed by the EDP, the national electricity company.

The maximum power of each generator is 150 KW/hour, which is attained when the wind speed reaches 11-12 m/s or 40 km/hour; of course, that doesn't happen very often. The annual output of the wind farm is around 2.5 million KWh, which is just about equal to the energy consumption of the town of Sines (not counting industrial consumption).

Aerogeradores de Portugal S.A. sells KWh to the EDP at an average gross price of 12.5 escudos. Yet this apparently simple fact conceals a changing reality, namely that the selling price of the electricity is highly variable depending on the time of year (demand is much higher in the winter, which pushes prices up) and the time of supply: day-time peaks and economy prices during the night. Should we therefore conclude that the recourse to renewable energy is opening the way to new economic systems linked to the weather?

Aerogeradores de Portugal s.a.
Phone: +351 699 72 79

//1991

case

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Environmental sustainability

Energy efficiency