(REPOST: Energy Storage News)
A “hybrid power plant”, controlling the grid for an entire island and its inhabitants, will be created with the addition of a management and control platform from energy storage system integrator Greensmith.
Graciosa, a tiny island in the Azores archipelago, has been the site of a project to integrate a high penetration of renewable energy which has been ongoing since 2015. Energy-Storage.News has reported several times on the project, which uses more than a megawatt of solar, 4.5MW of wind energy along with 3.2MWh of lithium battery energy storage and some thermal generation using diesel for backup.
The ‘grid-forming’ project reduces fossil fuel use on the island, which is a Portugese territory, by more than 65% while also reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. System integrator Younicos executed much of the project including installation of batteries, which were supplied by Leclanché for Graciolica, a special project group led by Danish investor Recharge A/S, which has taken a 50.1% stake in the €24 million (US$26.7 million) microgrid project. Such projects can make economic sense as well as social or environmental, due to the high cost of importing fossil fuels to island grids and their populations.
Last week Greensmith, best known for its software platforms with a leadership team that came from the cloud computing industry and decided to apply some of the same principles to energy, said that it had signed contracts to install its Greensmith Energy Management System (GEMS) software and control platform to the island’s new ‘grid’. Graciolica and Recharge A/S placed the order last month, Greensmith said, approved by their client, local utility EDA.