The Chairman of Red Eléctrica de España, José Folgado, today met with the Regional Councillor of Employment, Industry and Commerce of the Canary Islands, Francisca Luengo, to present her the results of the first two years of the actions carried out as part of the MAR Project (2011-2015). This project aims to adapt the lines and substations of the insular transmission grid, which were acquired by the Company in 2010, to the quality standards of the Company’s infrastructures on the Spanish peninsula.

During both 2011 and 2012 Red Eléctrica completed almost 30% of the actions envisaged in the MAR Project, with an investment of 40.5 million euros, of a total budget of 150 million. In addition, the Company has invested 16.5 million during this period in the specific maintenance plan for the Canary Islands' electricity grid.

Strategic installations program in the Canary Islands
The MAR Project will be complemented with the construction of the electricity infrastructures recently approved by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, that seek to resolve the main electricity deficiencies on the islands of Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Fuerteventura.

This special program will serve as a bridge between the suspension of the previous planning, in accordance with Royal Decree Law 13/2012 of 30 March, and the new planning scheduled for 2014-2020, currently in the administrative approval process. In this way, Red Eléctrica continues with its roadmap of steady investments in the transmission grid of the Canary Islands, due to the fact that 30% of the total 1 billion euros approved for this program will be allocated to the archipelago.

These new infrastructures will solve both the existing deficiencies in the transmission grid and the excessive concentration of connections in substations located in areas of higher electricity consumption, circumstances that seriously endanger the security of supply and the electricity subsystems of the Canary Islands.

In Gran Canaria the transmission grid of the Jinámar substation, which evacuates about half of the installed generation on the island and is responsible for the electricity supply of the northern and metropolitan areas, will be reconfigured. Moreover, the first few kilometres of the majority of the evacuation lines of this substation follow the same route, and all of them cross over the highway into the capital.

In order to minimise the vulnerability and criticality of this area, the new Sabinal substation will be built along with the new double circuit 220 kilovolt (kV) line, that will connect this substation with the Barranco de Tirajana-Jinámar line, in addition to four 66 kV connection lines.

In Tenerife, the new infrastructures are aimed at improving security of supply in the metropolitan area, in the capital and in the north of the island, which currently depend on the Candelaria substation. A failure of this substation seriously compromises the security of supply for the main electricity consumption area of the island.

To this end, the Caletillas substation and two 220 kV lines, Candelaria-Caletillas and Caletillas-El Rosario will be built and the Buenos Aires-Candelaria line will be repowered to 220 kV. Furthermore, the corresponding substations, El Rosario and Buenos Aires and a 66 kV line between El Rosario and Geneto will also be built.

The strengthening of the transmission grid in Fuerteventura will be carried out in the south of the island, an area that has the largest concentration of tourists and that is responsible for 40% of the insular electricity demand. Currently the electricity supply to the south depends on a single 66 kV line of about 75 km in length that runs from the Las Salinas thermal power station to the existing Matas Blancas substation. The dependence on a single 66 kV circuit and the large distance between the generation and consumption points puts the electricity supply of the area at risk. Moreover, a possible cut in demand would lead to a generation-consumption imbalance whose instability could result in a zero voltage condition in the entire Fuerteventura-Lanzarote system.

The construction of the double circuit 132 kV line from Puerto del Rosario to Great Tarajal and Matas Blancas, together with the new Matas Blancas and Great Tarajal (132 kV) substations will solve the lack of capacity and extreme vulnerability of the electricity supply in the area.

New organisational structure in Red Eléctrica in the Canary Islands
Red Eléctrica has incorporated the figure of the Regional Delegate in the Canary Islands, who will act as the representative of the Company before the public administrations of the Canary Islands and the media. To this end, it has appointed Ainara Irigoyen, who joined the Company in 2008.

It has also appointed Tomás Domínguez, until recently the Head of Department of the National Electricity Control Centre, as the new Director of System Operation in the Canary Islands, He replaces the former director, Santiago Marín, who will move to Madrid to become the Director of the Operation Services Department.