Energy shift brings new options for developments
21 December 2018
Cardno: With
consumers continuing to pay record levels for
electricity generation and
grid connection, businesses, communities and local governments are
increasingly seeking
renewable and hybrid
off-grid solutions to deliver
their power needs more cost efficiently.
Energy Services Director, Harry Fernandez, believes that businesses
seeking off-grid options are on the cusp of some significant changes
that will allow them to deliver
energy efficient solutions while
maintaining capacity for additional generation and storage as the
community’s needs grow.
“Over the past few years we’ve seen significant growth in the number of
requests to design energy solutions that minimise power consumption,
generate and store sufficient energy, and avoid costly grid augmentation
costs,” he said.
“While the
technology has been in place for some time, the costs are finally
starting to come down and more and more successful models are being
produced for a range of energy needs.
“The market is starting to change rapidly and this is opening up
opportunities for cleaner generation and less costly storage that allow
businesses to consider new options to power their projects,” he said.
Requests for hybrid energy solutions began to trend up in 2016, when the
Energy Services team were commissioned to deliver a power operations
study that proposed economically viable and sustainable options for an
eco-resort island project with a small development footprint.
“When you’re setting out to develop an island eco resort, its viability
is severely affected by the costs of expensive submarine cables for
power and you have to find alternative sources of energy from renewables
and blend these with conventional fuel sources,” said Harry.
“The inclusion of solar PV was an obvious choice, but the small
development footprint of the resort limited solar generation options.
“The solution came from finding enough yieldable space to produce about
4.5MWp from both ground and roof mounted solar arrays on the resort’s
facilities, with an additional 3 MWh battery storage and a small amount
of diesel to fill in the gaps.
“More recently we’ve set a precedent to harness solar power, battery
storage and water treatment technologies to deliver a water chlorination
facility that is powered entirely off grid as part of the
Logan Water
Infrastructure Alliance in
South East
Queensland.
“We investigated a number of technological options and settled on
generation from 323 panels on the roof of the reservoir going to a 95kWh
capacity Tesla battery power pack to deliver a self-contained ‘micro
power grid’.
“The solution delivered a facility which is entirely off-grid, reduces
greenhouse gas emissions, capital and operating costs, and is very low
maintenance,” he said.
A new trend is to develop off-grid energy solutions for housing
developments and masterplanned communities and its here where magic of
renewable energy, storage solutions and efficient building designs come
together.
“Integrating energy systems at a larger level through things like
geo-exchange solutions, centralised district cooling systems,
distributed and centralised generators, and storage batteries – and
combining them with passive design methods that create buildings which
heat and cool more efficiently help to significantly reduce the power
demand and electricity needs of a whole city.
“Mixed design solutions allow whole communities or cities to generate as
much energy as possible from renewable sources for residential and
commercial premises and keep essential systems operational at all times.
"Of course, you will always need a level of back-up systems since some
renewable sources can be intermittent but the challenge is to carefully
design a system that can generate additional power and have sufficient
storage and alternative sources to suit the particular project
constraint.”
Harry believes that the future for the renewable energy market is
looking bright and that rapidly evolving battery storage technology will
help to solve the Achilles heel of the renewables industry and open up a
range of affordable options for many businesses and projects.
“Standalone and micro-grid renewable energy solutions are challenging
but offer exciting opportunities for development and as the costs of
battery storage decreases and technology improves,” he said.
“We’re continually keeping abreast of new technology developments,
improving our knowledge and upscaling project delivery so that we can
provide competitive, affordable energy consultancy solutions to
businesses, developers and community groups.
“After more than 30 years in the industry, designing efficient systems
still energise me.”
Find out more about Cardno’s energy services, https://www.cardno.com/services-au/infrastructure/energy/.
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Source: Cardno - www.cardno.com
Contact: N/A
External Links: https://www.cardno.com/services-au/infrastructure/energy/
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