The recent industrial growth of Motril, along with the associated rise in population, is putting a considerable strain on the town’s only substation.

The said substation, Santa Isabel, however, is still capable of covering the municipality’s power demand, so there are not going to be any power cuts, but something has to be done about it, and soon.

If Motril is to grow, then it is going to need another substation, consider the local business sector, according to the Chairman of the Asociación de Empresarios de la Costa (AECOST), Luis Martín.

According to the Town Hall’s own webpage, the township receives its power needs via a HT-line into the Santa Isabel substation, where it is redistributed via HT lines to urban centres via underground cables.

The paper mill, Torrespapel on the port road (Polígono de Alborán) does have its own substation for its own private industrial use.

The Mayor, Flor Almón, says that Motril is working on a partial solution in the short and medium term, one that was set out a decade ago when the Spanish economic boom was in full bloom: a new substation to provide for all the future developments envisaged in the 2003 PGOU, which includes Motril Port growth. However, this project became unviable with the arrival of the crisis and the urban-development crash.

This still-born idea would have cost 30m euros and was to be financed by the new urban-development projects, which foresaw 17,000 new dwellings and over 2-million sq/m of trading-estate expansion.

The present revised figures in the next five to eight years is around 1,000 dwellings and 500,000 sq/m of industrial plots, mostly around the port (ZAL/PUE-1).

The Mayor said that they are looking for a pledge from Endesa to cover future (more modest) growth in exchange for a levee on electricity bills (un canon) on dwellings and per-KW on industry so that, as demand grows, the utility company will be receiving funds to finance a growth in its infrastructure.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada Andalucia)