southern company

Problem

The Shetland Islands are a group of islands off of the north coast of the UK. They are not connected to the main grid and therefore they run as a microgrid.  SSEN required to replace the existing diesel power station and wanted to displace as much fossil fuel generation as possible while continuing to meet UK Security and Quality of Supply Standards. The purpose of the project was to construct the smallest new power station and enable the maximum amount of renewables.

Solution

Strata Grid was deployed and combined optimised scheduling of energy storage and consumer demand devices with real-time control of renewables to maintain island stability.  The scheduling of energy storage and load smoothed the renewable profile

Result

The scheduling of energy storage and load smoothed the renewable profile and allowed the power station to run as efficiently as possible to the stability envelope of the power station (e.g. ramp rate of the diesel gensets). The addition of Strata Grid provided the connection of an additional 8MW of renewables, displacing 9.32 GWh diesel production and realising cost savings of £1m/yr.

More information

SSEN: NINES Project

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