The Development of Wind Farm Businesses and the Central Control of the Smart Grid in Spain: Making a Virtue of Necessity

This paper lays out the role of the first centre in the world for the integration into the electrical grid of electricity coming from renewable energy (the Spanish acronym for which is CECRE (Centro de Control de Energías Renovables; Control Centre for Renewable Energies)) and the industrial develop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnergies (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 20; p. 6582
Main Authors López, Santiago M., Cebrián, Mar
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2021
Subjects
Alternative energy sources
Control centres
Economic analysis
Electric power grids
Electricity distribution
Energy
Energy resources
Energy sources
Industrial development
Knowledge
Natural gas
Offshore
Profits
regulatory economics
Renewable resources
smart grids
Software
Tariffs
Technological change
Turbines
Wind farms
Wind power
United Kingdom > UK
Germany
Spain
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Summary:This paper lays out the role of the first centre in the world for the integration into the electrical grid of electricity coming from renewable energy (the Spanish acronym for which is CECRE (Centro de Control de Energías Renovables; Control Centre for Renewable Energies)) and the industrial development of large energy suppliers and wind turbine manufacturers in Spain. These two initiatives enabled the development of one of the first integrated markets for this type of energy source. The key contributions were the development of two software programs (wind management and management of solar light incidence), their visual implementation, and centralized digital control. An economic and business history approach is used to show the rise and relative failure of the Spanish wind industry during the period 2004–2015, when Spain became the fourth country after China, the US, and Germany in terms of installed capacity of renewable energy and, in relative terms, the second country after Denmark. This study is unique in that it provides an integrated vision of the reasons for the relative fall of Spain in the world ranking of wind energy producers. The methodology of the economic analysis of industrial policies makes it possible to explain the fall in the relative importance of Spain in the international panorama of wind farms.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en14206582