Officials on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria have decided to go ahead with a 200 MW pumped hydropower project after finding that the reservoir’s cavities and channels are not archaeologically significant.
Work on the facility was halted in mid-January after the archaeological company Tibicena ArqueologÃa y Patrimonio SL announced the discovery.
The General Directorate of Energy of Spain’s Department of Ecological Transition, Combating Climate Change and the Government of the Canary Islands granted the project a preliminary administrative permit. The developer of the project is the Spanish network operator Red Eléctrica de España, which invested approximately 400 million euros ($439.3 million) in the plant.
The station uses water from the upper reservoir of Chira and the lower reservoir of Soria. Its storage capacity is 3.5 GWh. The regional administration of Gran Canaria started developing the project in 2015.
In 2021, the Spanish Institute for Energy Diversification and Savings awarded 255 MW of solar capacity to the Canary Islands through the Solcan rebate system, which reimburses part of the installation costs with public funds. At that time, the installed solar power capacity of the archipelago was about 170 MW.
