Both prizes were awarded by the Spanish Wind Energy Association to mark World Wind Day, with the winners pocketing €3,000 each. The prizes will be presented during the Industry Dinner to be held on 7 June as part of AEE’s Wind Convention.
The project winning first prize in the Eolo Innovation competition, sponsored by Enel Green Power España, presents a new parameter for measuring wind turbulence, based on deviations every 30 seconds. “This new measurement will enable wind farm developers to obtain new information on high frequencies, which they will be able to use when studying new wind farm sites,” explains the association.
Meanwhile, AEE has awarded geriatric nurse and amateur photographer, María Oliva, for her “Harmony” photograph of a wind turbine in the association’s annual photography competition.
Tha AEE thanks all participants for the great success of both competitions, which it says attracted more than six hundred and fifty high quality photographs, and more than 20 projects, studies and dissertations showing a high degree of innovation. As a result, the judging panel also decided to give a special mention to the projects of all six finalists in the Eolo Innovation competition: Alberto Ríos of the European Universidad in Madrid, Elena Saíz of the Comillas Pontifical University, Oriol Gomis of the Polytechnic University of Barcelona, Bernardino Couñago and Ramón Barturen of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Rodolfo Dufo and José Luis Bernal of the University of Sarragossa, and Urtzi Guruziaga from the Bilbao School of Engineering.
The Eolo Awards for Innovation and Photography will be presented during the Spanish wind industry’s dinner, one of the main events of the AEE’s Wind Energy Convention on 7 and 8 June. A broad spectrum of representatives from the sector including government, along with parliamentarians and heads of companies and organisations in the sector will be in attendance and will also find out who has been given the Eolo Journalism Award – to be announced on the night – and the annual European Union Award for efforts to foster development of renewable energy, which will be collected by the Director General of Energy of the European Commission, Philip Lowe.
During the Wind Convention, the photos of the twenty finalists of the photo contest will be exhibited at the Eurobuilding Hotel in Madrid. Three of the top finalists’ photos are shown below, while the rest can be viewed here.
Electricity generation using wind energy reached 42,976 GWh in Spain in 2010, which means that for the first time in history, it overcame Germany -36,500 GWh- as Europe's leading producer of wind energy, according to data of the Barometer EurObserv'ER, the European Commission´s observatory of renewable energies. 16.4% of the country’s electricity demand was covered by wind energy last year, compared to 6.2% in Germany.
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