Without a doubt, power is a vital component of any countries drive towards development and sustenance of same. This is why a number of Nations all around the world are seeking for viable alternatives to the conventional sources of power such as Nuclear and hydro. Portugal appears to be among those leading the pack in the scheme of things even as it came up with a new feat.
Just a month ago, Portugal was able to produce enough renewable for it to power the whole countries needs as far as energy is concerned. This feat is one that is not matched for well over 40 years, this information is based on what was made available by the Portuguese Renewable Energy Association.
It was said by the group that the renewable energy which was produced back in the month of March was about 103.6% of the total electricity demand of the whole of mainland Portugal. It is worthy of note that Portugal also consists of a number of Islands which also have their own separate systems of energy. About 55% of the said energy was brought about via Hydro-power and about 42% of same was derived via wind, the country however still makes use of fossil fuels for balancing its demand and supply.
It was however reported that there were a few hours when the thermal fossil power plants were needed with a view to supporting the supply of power in Portugal according to the APREN. The period under review was however compensated using some other sources of great renewable energy production.
It is also expected by APREN that the said pattern of depending mainly on renewable energy sources using fossil fuels as the backup when needed will become a bit more common
Energy and Environment Collaboration
Despite the recorded progress, a number of cities still find it difficult with the rather ambitious climate goals. Expectations are on the high that by the year 2040, renewable energy production will be able to some extent guarantee in a way that is rather cost effective the net power consumption of Portugal mainland according to APREN.
For a large number of countries, a full-scale renewable energy system still appears to be a rather challenging aim. A number of little Island countries have been able to manage it as well as some bigger countries as well.
Drawing the Parallels
Norway and Iceland have been able to achieve all of their power needs via geothermal and hydro-power and have over a long period of time done this. However, these Nations leverage upon the unique advantage of the unique Geology of their regions thus making it quite difficult to copy the same feat.
Energy
Quite a number of little Islands are basically green, however, bigger Nations are quite rare. On some windy days in 2017 and 2015, Denmark overshot its needs for electricity via wind power alone. And a number of times over the past years, Costa Rica has been powered using just renewable power for a number of months, and it is fueled using heavy rains which finds its way into the hydroelectric plants. Portugal is also reported to have gained from the rainfall which was recorded as higher than normal a month ago according to Reuters. As the production of renewable gained, the overall electricity prices witnessed a fall of about 10% when compared with the previous year based on the report by the wire service.
It is worthy of note that the electricity prices of Portugal are perhaps among the highest in the whole of Europe according to Reuters. It is on record that Portugal has made enormous investments into renewable sources of energy just as its next-door neighbor which is Spain.
About one decade ago, a report by Jerome Socolovsky for NPR all the way from a farm project in Agucadoura which is Portuguese farm which is the first of wave farms on the earth created by a firm from Scotland.
He made it clear that project was created in Portugal as a result of the available subsidies which includes feed-in tariff which is an artificial innovation created by the government of Portugal with a view to encouraging the use of wave power to generate electricity
National
It is worthy of note that the wave farm actually closed as soon as it was opened. However, public sector investments in renewable energy went on for some years even as the high rates of power went high. A number of the spending was cut back in the year 2012 in the midst of some rather austere measures and a number more were cut back in the year 2016, according to reports by Politico Europe. However based upon this point, a number of renewable energy projects had already been offset and were functioning at a reasonable operational cost according to a 2016 report by Reuters.
