Dave Keppel Innovation Award 2019

Most Innovative new technology/product/initiative/process/campaign or service

Winner: 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. 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.

More about Revolve Energy and Vector Powersmart

Runner-up: Ecoinnovation for the SHP-Triplex Solar Hydraulic Water Pump. 

Ecoinnovation have have taken on board the simplicity and reliability of low cost solar PV to make an economic water pumping solution for farmers, the SHP-TX (Solar Hydraulic Pump TripleX).

Only one SHP is needed for heads of 10-300m, if you need more head or flow you can add identical pumps in series or parallel.  The pump is highly efficient (best global efficiency for a solar pump of this size) and cost efficient with a farmer able to buy the core parts needed (SHP-TX and solar PV from<$3000 exc GST). On a good site where the SHP displaces a petrol or diesel pump the payback can be less than 1 year.

This pumping product has taken 5 years to develop and farmers love it. For a more detailed product description refer to this link.

https://www.powerspout.com/collections/solar-shp/products/shp-triplex-shp-tx

More about Ecoinnovation