Extreme E Final Champions How Uruguay sets the pace for renewable energy | Daily News Byte

Every Extreme E race has an environmental theme, and some experts have even claimed that it is a climate change campaign with an attached motor race. For the finals in Uruguay, the focus was on renewable energy, as this small South American country leads the world in making the change. This made it the perfect location to conclude Season 2 of the Extreme E all-electric SUV racing series.

The efforts that Uruguay has made to build a robust renewable energy infrastructure are incredibly impressive. But what’s even more reassuring is that Uruguay didn’t make the change out of a sense of duty or environmental guilt. The country chose renewable sources to ensure its energy independence and greater grid security.

Unlike some countries in the region, Uruguay does not have significant fossil fuel resources. Uruguay has imported a lot of energy from Argentina and Brazil for decades, and although it already had a good infrastructure for hydroelectric generation, it has reached the maximum possible from the country’s rivers and also depends on the level of rain. So, a few decades ago, Uruguay relied on thermal energy from fossil fuels as much as most countries still do. Uruguay wanted to change that and end its reliance on imported fuel with uncontrollably fluctuating prices set by foreign supplier cartels.

The country had previous experience with wind power, but this was with older, twin-blade technology. The wind farm I visited in Caracoles, Uruguay during the Extreme E Season 2 finale was the first in the country to use double-fed three-bladed induction generators (DFIGs), which are more tolerant of sharp changes in wind speed than earlier technologies. Turbine generators must remain synchronized with the grid frequency, so if the wind speed changes suddenly, with traditional turbines, the grid pushes the generator to keep time, which causes stress. The DFIG system does not have this limitation.

To begin its push towards renewable energy sources, Uruguay initially installed five turbines in Caracoles in 2009 delivering 10 MW, followed by five more in 2011. Subsequently, 67.2 MW were installed at another site in 2014, 65, 1 MW in 2015, and a mass of 66 MW. Valentines Pampa Palomas Colonia Arias location in 2017, for a total of 506.3 MW. Uruguay still has 593 MW of hydroelectric power and 1,178.2 MW of thermal generators that rely on fossil fuels. But Uruguay hardly ever uses them. At the time of writing, for example, only 42 MW, or 3% of Uruguay’s electricity needs, came from this type of source. The rest came from wind, solar, hydro, hydro purchased from Argentina or biomass. This puts most European countries or the US to shame.

Uruguay is a very breezy country, with its southern coast facing the Atlantic Ocean. That is why he saw the potential of wind as a source of energy, but the air flow must be within certain limits. When the wind blows up to 4 m per second (9 mph), the Vestas V80 turbines at the Karacoles site produce no power. They then produce an increasing amount as the wind speed increases until they reach an optimum production of 15 m per second (34 mph). Over 25 m per second (56 mph) they must cut to prevent damage. In Uruguay, V80 turbines can run efficiently for a long time. For example, Caracoles has a nominal power of 20 MW, which means it can produce 20 MW when operating at maximum capacity. This would allow it to deliver 175,200 MWh of electricity in a non-leap year when the turbines were operating at maximum capacity each day. In 2021, Caracoles produced 59,756 MWh, which means that it achieved 34% of its nominal production.

In other words, wind may not blow all the time, but it does blow enough of the time to be an incredibly efficient and reliable source of energy. Since wind comes from a necessary ecological need to balance air pressure from warm regions of the world against colder ones, it will always be available at some level. Actual day-to-day behavior can be unpredictable, but on average there will always be wind.

It is also extremely cost effective. Caracoles cost only $60 million to install. It can nominally produce 20 MW, which equates to $3 million per MW. Compare this with nuclear power. The Sizewell C nuclear power plant recently approved by the UK government would produce 3,200 MW but is expected to cost up to £30 billion ($36 billion). That’s over $11 million per MV and will take 9-12 years to install. In reality, the Sizewell C will probably last longer and cost more.

Of course, as already stated, wind farms do not operate at full capacity all the time, but nuclear power theoretically could. If you assume the 34% figure mentioned earlier is typical, the actual cost of Caracoles is about $9 million per MW, although wind turbines have since gotten even cheaper. These days they cost upwards of $1.3-2.2 million per MV. It’s also worth noting that China is trying to stop global uranium stockpiles, so any country without its own local sources of nuclear fuel could jump out of the frying pan into the fire by switching to fossil-fueled thermogeneration reactors.

Extreme E refers to its environmental connections as its legacy program, and many activities include improvement tasks with a lasting impact, such as the replanting of mangroves in Senegal to race at that location during the 2021 racing season. Although Extreme E cannot take direct responsibility for a strong portfolio of renewable of Uruguay’s energy sources, the series of races highlighted what is possible if the country achieves the political will to go green. This is something that every nation should emulate.

Wind energy will not be the solution everywhere. For some countries, solar energy will be more efficient, for others it could be hydroelectric, and somewhere tidal or geothermal. But as Uruguay shows, the benefits are not just a clear conscience about climate change. Countries weaning themselves off their reliance on fossil fuels can free themselves from an energy source that is tightly controlled by a small minority of suppliers who have shown a capricious, even malicious, attitude toward pricing. Replacing this with renewable energy is the path to national freedom, not just a better environment.