A noisy, polluting diesel generator is a thing of the past in a remote community in the Solomon Islands, thanks to the efforts of two Dunedin businesses.
Powerhouse Wind and Control Focus combined resources and experience to replace a diesel generator — which operated for only three hours each night — with a renewable power system at the Bishop Koete Rural Training Centre on the island of Nggela Sule.
The hybrid wind-solar system was commissioned by Caritas New Zealand on behalf of the Solomon Islands Association of Rural Training Centres, with assistance from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s innovation fund.
For small, isolated populations, including around the Pacific, the high capital cost of a grid solution to provide electricity was permanently out of the question, Powerhouse Wind director Bill Currie said.
Until recently, the answer for those situations had been a small diesel generator, which was noisy and polluting and had ongoing fuel cost and supply issues, he said.
New technologies were opening the way to provide modern, 24-hour renewable energy solutions for those communities, without the ongoing fuel cost and with no pollution.
The system harvested renewable energy from both wind and the sun with a 2kW Thinair wind turbine and 4kW of photovoltaic panels (solar panels).
A lithium ion battery provided 15kWH of usable storage to meet peak loads on the system and provide energy when there was no sun or wind.
The diesel generator was coupled with the system to provide back-up, Mr Currie said.
A Synergi hybrid power solution from Enatel in Christchurch was used to manage the system and do the necessary power conversions.
That unit had some great characteristics, as all its functions were provided by ‘‘hot swappable’’ modules, where a failure in any module meant a reduced system output, not a total outage, and full capacity could be restored by plugging in a replacement without stopping the system.
That meant the power conversion equipment could be maintained by people trained to respond to alarms and diagnose problems, but who didn’t need advanced electrical skills to repair or replace components.
Mr Currie and James Hardisty, from Control Focus, went to the Bishop Koete Rural Training Centre and residents were very excited about it, Mr Currie said.
Previously, they had power only from 6pm to 9pm, when the generator was running, and diesel was also very expensive.
On the night the system was installed, an all-night movie night was held to mark the occasion.
It was a pilot project and there would be a review period for several months to see how it performed. He hoped it would lead to other systems being installed, Mr Currie said.
As the first system was sited at a school, there was a good opportunity to develop and teach the skills needed to operate and maintain the equipment sustainably.
‘‘Learning to live well with a local renewably based micro-grid is a useful life skill that will hopefully mean more and more isolated communities can replace their diesels — with all their drawbacks — with quiet and constant renewable energy systems,’’ Mr Currie said.
There was a network of about 40 rural training centres throughout the Solomon Islands aimed at teaching life skills to young people, he said.
