A Hug for Helping Deploy a Microgrid Fleet That Addresses Unreliable Power in The Bahamas
When Michael Clark recently visited The Bahamas and chatted with a limousine driver about how he’s helping deploy a fleet of microgrids in the country, at the end of the ride from the airport, the driver got out of the car, hugged him and thanked him for bringing sustainable, resilient energy to the country.
In other countries, the locals don’t get excited about his work, said Clark, who is CEO of Encorp. The company is providing controls for eight microgrids that will be the first phase of a project that aims to provide resilience and help the island nation meet its Paris Accord target of 30% clean energy generation by 2030. The fleet represents a growing trend in deploying microgrid fleets.
Hurricane Dorian’s destruction in The Bahamas
“Power is a huge issue. Hurricane Dorian did a lot of damage,” Clark said.
Dorian–which hit The Bahamas in 2019 and devastated the energy infrastructure of the Abaco islands and Grand Bahama island–wasn’t the only hurricane to undermine the country’s infrastructure. Over 20 hurricanes have impacted The Bahamas to date, underscoring the need for resilience. The island chain is in the Atlantic southeast of the Florida coastline and north of Cuba.
Hurricanes on the islands have spurred new thinking about energy systems. After a hurricane causes the grid to go down, it can take months or years to restore service. While that’s happening, critical facilities – water treatment plants, water pumping stations, hospitals, police stations and cell towers – need power right away. Many islands are investing in microgrids to meet critical power needs.
Many challenges to providing reliable power
In The Bahamas, a number of challenges make it difficult to supply reliable power, said Verron Darville, energy manager, Ministry of Energy and Transport.
The Bahamas consists of a total of 271 islands, many of them small and unpopulated. Bahamas Power & Light (BP&L) provides electricity and energy services to 17 islands with 29 diesel power stations. Some of the power stations include undersea cables, located close to the surface, that often are hit by ships, sparking outages.
The country isn’t deploying wave power because of environmental concerns and lack of confidence in the technology, Darville said. In addition, some of the islands don’t have a lot of land for clean energy projects. And very few islands have a large enough population for the utility to even break even.
The plan is to deploy a fleet of microgrids– funded through power purchase agreements (PPA) with various microgrid developers.
The first phase of this project focuses on eight islands: Abaco, Cat Island, Eleuthera, Harbour Island, Inagua, Long Island, New Providence and North Andros.
LNG, solar and batteries to replace diesel generators
The plan is to deploy 25 MW of liquified natural gas (LNG) generators, 48 MW of solar PV and 35 MW of battery storage systems to replace the aging diesel generators.
Under the PPAs, the vendors will pay for the microgrids and sell energy, partnering with the utility, which will be responsible for the billing and distribution. Encorp is hiring local people to install and manage the microgrids.
LNG–which is created by chilling natural gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit so that it becomes a liquid state– can generate 18% more power than diesel and release 30% fewer emissions, Darville said. The country only allows a certain amount of solar to be part of the energy mix, so is focusing on LNG. When a cloud covers a solar panel, it can cause frequency disruptions that spark outages, Darville explained.
As a result of the microgrids, Bahamians will see relief right away in energy costs that affect the cost of living, Darville said. The country plans to educate Bahamians about how to conserve energy to keep the costs as low as possible.
Dashboards will educate citizens and utilities about microgrid operations
Part of that effort will involve Encorp installing in high-profile locations interactive visual dashboards that supply real-time data analysis to the microgrid customers and the public. This is intended to demystify microgrids and help the utility manage the remote island microgrids not interconnected to the grid.
The dashboards will be installed at the Ministry of Energy BP&L headquarters and the prime minister’s offices.
Installing fleets of microgrids that utilize the same control platforms is a growing trend, said Peter Asmus, adjunct faculty member at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and executive director, Alaska Microgrid Group.
“The deployment of fleets of microgrids that leverage the same control platform offers huge advantages to utilities or local governments seeking a unified view of operations. Fleets offer economies of scale on the hardware side when compared to one-offs, which was the norm for the microgrid industry in the past,” Asmus said.
A single but customized approach to controls on the software side keeps the fleet unified despite geographical diversity, he said.
Microgrid fleets in California and the U.K.
Encorp is installing a fleet of 6 microgrids in Alameda County. The Inflation Reduction Act, which provides tax incentives for clean energy projects, is driving the trend, he said.
In addition, the U.K. Office of Generation has planned a fleet of 27 microgrids for utilities E.On and Scotland’s Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, according to press material from Encorp, which will provide the controls. The first is a resilience-as-a-service microgrid, expected to be completed in April, on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The goal of the project is to explore new offerings for customers.
The project also responds to a European Union “winter package” that calls for the creation of “local energy communities” that could establish, own or lease networks and autonomously manage these new community-based structures.
The first microgrid is an example of a second option: a community can enter into an agreement with the local distribution system operator – in this case E.ON – to operate the networks. The goal of the community networks is to maximize self-consumption of on-site distributed energy resources and minimize costs to end users.
Whether the fleets are in the U.K. or The Bahamas, they’re expected to provide efficiency, lower costs and resilience for utility customers.
