GEROA

This park is expected to operate for a maximum of 25 years, which corresponds to its entire useful life. Afterwards the wind turbines will be dismantled and removed from the area.

GEROA is a research and development initiative intended to acquire learning and experience for future developments. GEROA is a park designated as pre-commercial since its capacity does not exceed 50 MW and has reduced dimensions in comparison with other projects; since it will only have 3 - 5 units. Its objective is to advance in the development of SATH technology and analyze its social, economic, and environmental, among others impacts.

GEROA follows the path of DemoSATH, our first full-scale unit installed in BiMEP, an open water test area located in Armintza (Bizkaia). One of the main advantages of its location close to DemoSATH, will be that we can apply all the lessons learned. In the Initial Project Document, a specific study has been carried out to select an environmentally viable area for the location of GEROA nearby BiMEP. In this study, great deep areas, protected natural locations, sites located less than 10 km from the coast were excluded to avoid significant impacts on the landscape, submarine cables, areas of intense maritime traffic or areas known to have a greater intensity of fishing.

No, the expansion is not planned in the future. Note that any commercial offshore wind development in the area would need to be in accordance with the North Atlantic Marine Planning (POEM); and currently the marine planning does not allow commercial wind development in this area.

Yes, in fact one of GEROA's challenges is to demonstrate the viability of shared use with other activities, and particularly offshore fishing and aquaculture. We are analyzing the way in which all of them can coexist so that GEROA is a shared project, with economic benefits for different sectors. To this end, meetings are being held to better understand the point of view of the stakeholders involved, and their comments are being taken into account in the technical proposal that is currently under development.

The wind turbines have an electrical transmission cable that allows the energy to be transported to the electrical grid, being able to generate clean energy equivalent to the electricity need of 45,000 homes in a year.

GEROA’s expectations go far beyond the generation of clean energy equivalent to the demand of 11% of homes in Bizkaia. The main expected impact is the development and demonstration of a locally produced technology that allows the generation of clean energy at a low economic, social and environmental cost. At the same time, GEROA will be the beginning of the sustainable development of a new industry with great prospects for the coming decades, with a great impact in the local supply chain. Additionally, it will contribute and complement BiMEP, offering the environmental supply chain and research entities an open water experimentation laboratory, which will allow technological research opportunities in areas such as offshore wind energy, fishing, and offshore aquaculture.