Tilos will be the first ever island in Greece and the Mediterranean for that matter, to run completely on renewable energy as of early 2017.
Situated in the Dodecanese, between the islands of Rhodes and Kos, the initiative which is part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 program under the name TILOS (Technology Innovation for the Local Scale Optimum Integration of Battery Energy Storage), has been green lit by the Regulatory Authority for Energy and involves setting up a hybrid energy production and storage station which is expected to cover more than 80% of the island’s energy requirements.
This EU project involves 15 stakeholders from seven European countries and is led by a research team from the Laboratory of Soft Energy Applications and Environmental Protection (known as The Lab) at the Piraeus University of Applied Sciences.
The TILOS program was singled out among 80 competing companies in Horizon 2020, the EU’s largest research and innovation program with some 80 billion euros in funding spread out over a period of seven years (2014-2020).
“The mounting points of the wind turbine and solar panels have been identified. We estimate that the whole system will be put into operation in May 2017. Work on the development of a ‘smart’ grid will begin immediately,” Ioannis Kaldelis, head of The Lab, told Greek media.
Home to some 400 residents, Tilos is currently powered by a submarine cable from Kos.
