PUC and stakeholders learn more about battery storage |17 March 2016

In view of the importance of storage in the deployment of renewable energy, the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) and the Seychelles Energy Commission (Sec) have invited experts to make a presentation on battery storage system to sensitise stakeholders.

Energy storage systems being distributed are making increasingly significant contributions in the operational performance and reliability of power systems with high penetration of renewable energy so there is a need to maximise the value and performance of energy storage.

Global application manager from ABB Switzerland, Dario Cicio, led the presentation entitled ‘The power to control energy’. He was accompanied by ABB (ASEA Brown Boveri) Mauritius sales manager Gunasekaran S. Thevar.

ABB is a Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. It operates mainly in robotics and the power and automation technology areas.

Mr Cicio said energy storage is required to balance the power generation and the load you have in the country.

“When it comes to introducing renewable power generation such as wind farms or photovoltaic what happens is that the sun is not always shining and the wind is not always blowing, so instead of having a stable power generation you may encounter instabilities in the network. If you rely a lot on renewable energy then you need some kind of buffer to balance the power generation and the load whenever the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. So with batteries you have a very flexible solution which you can position everywhere in the country and it can easily be installed and can charge the battery with the surplus of sun or wind then re-use this power when the elements are not present,” he said.

The chief executive (CEO) of PUC, Philip Morin, said increasingly storage is taking a more important role in the play of electrical power systems.

“As renewable energy penetration in the PUC grid increases, it presents a challenge for us in terms of stability and reliability of the network and one of the many solutions will be to look at storage. It will probably even bring economical solutions that are not available yet in the context of our system,” he said.

“What we hope to achieve through looking deeply at storage is that eventually we could increase the penetration in the grid of renewable energy,” he added.

Mr Morin pointed out that the neighbouring countries such as Reunion, Mauritius and Mayotte are in this technology although they also have other forms of storage.

Present were representatives from PUC, Sec, Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA), Indian Ocean Tuna Ltd (IOT) and other stakeholders such as PV suppliers and electrical contractors.