The Seychelles are a group of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean,
about 1,000 miles east of the coast of Africa. The archipelago currently relies
on exclusive and dirty diesel generators to produce most of its electricity,
and fuel accounts for about 25% of the country’s total net imports. In short:
Renewable energy makes a ton of sense there. That's why it's so cool to see
that they just inaugurated their first wind farm.
It's
located on Mahé Island, the biggest island of the Seychelles. It has a
capability of 6-megawatt, which should be enough to meet 8% of the island's
electricity demand. That's enough to reduce emissions by 5,500 tons of carbon
dioxide annually (and also reduce smog-forming emissions) and power more than
2,100 homes, saving 1.6 million liters of diesel fuel per year.
Definitely a good start, though I hope that they will keep increasing
their wind power capacity (and maybe add solar PV and solar water heaters too)
to ultimately meet all of their electricity demand with clean sources.
Island
nations should be near ideal places for wind power. You get many of the reimbursement
of offshore wind farms (out at sea, the wind almost always blows) but without
the extra costs associated with deep-water construction.
At first, looking at the photos, I thought it was strange that
they built the wind farm at the foot of those mountains and not on them, but
I'm sure they've modeled the best spot. It could be that those mountains act as
a funnel and that the average wind speed is essentially faster there than at on
the summit...
Interestingly, the wind farm was developed by Masdar, an energy company owned by the government of Abu Dhabi via its Mubadala Development Company, and funded by Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD). They're perceptibly trying to expand their geographical reach, but it's also nice to see them work on smaller scale projects. They've positively got the resources to make a difference in places where money might be scarce, so that's noble.
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