Second emergency power plant starts on Tenerife
- Mariano Hernández Zapata visited Tenerife’s second emergency power plant on May 12, a new backup facility in Los Realejos now ready to stabilize supply. - The Los Realejos plant adds 14.8 MW through eight generator sets, after March’s 9 MW La Campana unit became Tenerife’s first emergency plant. - It matters because Tenerife still faces structural generation shortfalls, so these plants are stopgaps until bigger fleet renewals and grid upgrades arrive.
Tenerife’s power problem is not really about one plant. It’s about an island grid that has been running with too little firm backup for too long. That leaves very little margin when something trips, demand spikes, or an old unit fails. The news this week is that the Canary Islands government says Tenerife’s second emergency power plant is now operational in Los Realejos — a temporary backup site meant to step in only when the system is under stress. ### What actually opened? The new site is in the La Gañanía industrial park in Los Realejos, on Tenerife’s north side. Sampol Canarias installed it, and the government says it is already operational and ready to run whenever the system operator calls for it. This is not a normal always-on power station — basically, it sits there as insurance for the grid. (www3.gobiernodecanarias.org) ### How big is it? The key number is 14.8 MW. The plant uses eight generator sets and cost close to €11 million. On its own, that is not enough to remake Tenerife’s electricity system, but that is not the job. The job is to give operators one more controllable block of power when the island risks a serious supply incident or a “zero energy” blackout. (www3.gobiernodecanarias.org) ### Why is this the second one? Because the first emergency plant for Tenerife was presented in March at La Campana, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. That earlier site adds 9 MW and uses five diesel generator sets. With Los Realejos now added, Tenerife has two emergency plants in service under this backup program, with more emergency installations still moving through approvals. (www3.gobiernodecanarias.org) ### Why does Tenerife need stopgap plants at all? The short version is aging infrastructure and not enough dependable generation. The Canary Islands government has tied these projects to the energy emergency declared on October 2, 2023, and to a broader structural deficit affecting Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Fuerteventura. In a December 2025 government note, officials put that combined deficit at 268 MW. So these modular plants are being used as a bridge while the older generation fleet is replaced. (tenerifeweekly.com) ### Are these permanent? No — and that matters. The government keeps describing them as provisional, modular, and extraordinary. They are supposed to run only in critical moments, not as permanent baseload generation. The political pitch is pretty clear: keep the lights on now, then retire these backup units once the ordinary procurement for new generation and longer-term system upgrades land. (www3.gobiernodecanarias.org) ### What are the longer-term fixes? There are two tracks. One is new generation on the islands. The other is better interconnection. Tenerife and La Gomera already got a boost from the new submarine electricity link inaugurated in February 2026, a 36-kilometer connection that improves system support between the islands. But interconnection helps most when the generation fleet behind it is strong enough too — and that is the part Canary officials are still trying to rebuild. (www3.gobiernodecanarias.org) ### So what changed this week? What changed is not the diagnosis. That has been obvious for a while. What changed is that Tenerife now has a second emergency plant physically in place and ready to be dispatched if the grid needs it. That gives Tenerife and La Gomera a bit more breathing room — not a full fix, but a bigger safety net than they had in March. (europapress.es) ### Bottom line? This is a backup battery without the battery — a fast, temporary lifeboat for a fragile island grid. Tenerife is a little safer from a blackout today. But the catch is that emergency plants only buy time. They do not solve the underlying shortage by themselves. (www3.gobiernodecanarias.org)
