A group of Vocational Training students from the CIFP Valentín Paz Andrade, in Vigo, has won the first prize of the “Dams with a Future: Energy and Nature in Balance” challenge, promoted this year by the Naturgy Foundation within the Innovatech FP program, an initiative of the Xunta de Galicia. Their proposal, a self-sufficient floating platform capable of extracting sediments from reservoirs without putting aquatic fauna at risk.
Dams and hydroelectric plants produce renewable energy, guarantee water supply and help control floods, but their operation also poses known environmental problems since they hinder the migration of fish and retain sediments that, downstream, alter the ecological balance of rivers.
With that diagnosis as a starting point, Naturgy Foundation—together with its hydraulic generation business division, Naturgy Generación—proposed this course to Galician VET centers the challenge of designing viable and innovative solutions that improve the environmental integration of dams and power plants.demonstrating that energy production and biodiversity can advance together.
It is the second time that the Foundation participates in Innovatech FP, a program that connects educational centers with companies to work on real problems of innovation, sustainability and technological entrepreneurship. This edition has also recorded record participation numbers.
The award-winning project, developed by the CIFP team Valentín Paz Andrade, proposes a comprehensive system for sustainable sediment management in reservoirs. Its central element is an energetically self-sufficient floating platform – equipped with photovoltaic generation, autonomous navigation and advanced control systems – capable of extracting sediments, minimizing the environmental impact, avoiding water turbidity and protecting aquatic fauna throughout the process. The organizers highlight precisely its comprehensive nature, combining technology, sustainability and economic viability in the same solution.
As part of the process, The students made a technical visit to two Naturgy hydroelectric plants in Galicia and to the Lamprey Conservation Center, emblematic species of Galician rivers, accompanied by the Eduardo Barreiros Galician Center for Professional Training Innovation, which provides technical support to the program. There they learned first-hand about the generation processes, the environmental conditions and the solutions already applied on the ground.
Vocational training and energy transition
The Naturgy Foundation’s participation in Innovatech FP is part of its commitment to young talent, educational innovation and the energy transition, and reinforces collaboration between the educational field, public administrations and the business community as a driver of social transformation.
Initiatives like this show that Vocational Training can become a key space to generate real solutions to today’s great challengestraining professionals who in the future will have in their hands the challenge of ensuring that infrastructures such as dams continue to be essential for society, but harmoniously integrated with the nature that surrounds them.