Revolve Energy and Vector Powersmart for Camp Glenorchy

Opened in March 2018, Camp Glenorchy has been designed, built and operated in line with the philosophy and principles of the living building challenge (LBC), recognised as the most stringent environmental design certification in the world. For the first half of 2019 Camp Glenorchy generated twice its energy use and used half the energy per guest as a similar facility.

Glenorchy is a very isolated area, 45km of single electricity line in overhead in an alpine environment supply the town. Consequently the site experiences regular power outages and power quality issues. Camp Glenorchy is a significant site within the community and has been designed as a Civil defence hub to assist the community to manage major natural disasters such as earthquakes, flooding and storms.

In the pursuit of continued improvement 2019 was monumental as Camp Glenorchy made a number of significant improvements including the addition of 130kVA, 232kWh Qinous lithium battery system (BESS) and an energy management system (EMS) These recent additions round out the solution into a completed integrated site that achieves exemplary levels of energy efficiency, comfort and innovation. In addition the site now has the ability to interact in a meaningful way with the local grid.

Key innovations:

1. Micro grid, 2 adjacent sites (Camp Glenorchy and Mrs Woollys) with 15 building and a campsite operating behind a single meter. The structural allows shared use of onsite generation and energy storage.
2. The microgrid controller achieves a high level of PV self use increasing return on investment to the property through load shifting and ensures backup of the site for extended outages, utilising the lowest cost energy source and balancing power flows.
3. The EMS receives control period demand signals from Auroa and sets the operating limits of grid import to ensure no demand charges are incurred by site.
   1. Provides a user interface to allow staff to respond to Transpower demand events in order to receive payment for grid support at critical times.
   2. Actively monitors the battery SOC in off grid mode and hierarchically sheds load to avoid where possible use of the generator.
4. An interface is provided to allow staff to override automatic settings to suit operational requirements.
   1. Extensive energy monitoring of over 250 electrical sub circuits for, with a live dashboard for optimisation and energy management.
   2. Extensive building controls make significant contribution to achieving the 50% reduction in energy use when compared to other similar facilities. The completely integrated solution controls all key systems including ground source heat pumps, solar water heating, space heating, lighting, ventilation, showers, irrigation. The system is also integrated with the site booking system ensuring that the rooms are only heated when a check-in is imminent, reducing standing losses.

Winner: Dave Keppel Innovation Award (SEANZ Awards 2019)

Find out more about Revolve Energy and Vector Powersmart

Vector Powersmart for the Niue Renewable Energy Project

Vector Powersmart (formerly known as PowerSmart) has completed many projects in the South Pacific since 2012, however none of these projects have involved the level of difficulty of this project with the need to integrate existing and new renewable energy infrastructure while working on a live network. This brought a number of challenges, but the result is that now 28.6% of Niue’s energy needs (measured since May 2019) are being met by renewable generation, saving approximately 130,000L of diesel‚ setting Niue up well to achieve its goal of 80% renewable energy by 2025.

What was done?

There were four parts of the project;

1. Working on the existing solar plants to establish communication with the Niue Central Power Station.
2. Installing 600kW of solar to increase the islands overall solar capacity to 1.1MW of solar generation. The solar array was installed well inland on high ground to avoid any potential damage from cyclones in the future.
3. Installing 0.80MW / 3.15MWh Tesla Powerpack 2 (BESS) at the Niue Power Station to maximise the use of solar on the island and eliminate the need to curtail solar to maintain grid stability.
4. Installing Vector PowerSmarts bespoke Energy Management System (EMS) to manage Niue’s electricity grid by balancing the new and existing solar generation, existing diesel generators and BESS. To meet the demands of the Niue electricity grid Vector Powersmarts EMS:
   1. Controls when diesel generators need to be turned on or off
   2. Assesses what electricity is being produced by the solar and when to use this directly to power the demands of the grid or when to send it to the BESS
   3. Assesses how much electricity is stored in the batteries and what actions need to be taken, and turn diesel generators on or off

Essentially it is the central brain talking with the original diesel generators, original and new solar arrays and the BESS to manage Niue’s electricity network. All of this had to be done while working on a live network.

Results:

Through the addition of an EMS, BESS and more solar to the network Niue can often operate without any diesel generators running for up to 10 hours at a time - on average the generators are switched off for 5-7 hours per day. Over the last 5 months the total integrated system has resulted in 28.6% of Niue’s electricity coming from solar renewable sources, saving over 130,000 litres of diesel.

Runner-up: Best Off-Grid Renewable System (SEANZ Awards 2019)

Find out more about Vector Powersmart