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Location:
Tvedestrand, Norway
Challenge:
Support a decentralised system at a new school with the aim of demonstrating how public buildings can help balance the grid through distributed energy resources, such as solar panels. At the same time, help the school to reduce energy costs.
Solution:
An xStorage Buildings system stores energy from a 4,400 square metre solar array on the roof of a new school to minimise energy bills and provide capacity to the flexibility market in the grid.
Results:
Tvedestrand Upper Secondary School is achieving a reduction in peak power consumption by up to 100 kW daily. This reduces pressure on the grid. When the solar panels produce more than the school needs, it can make money by selling power back to the grid.
Eaton was chosen as system provider because they could offer a system with refurbished batteries as part of their solution. The technical and environmental aspect led to this decision, and we use Tvedestrand as a testbed for our future battery usage and implementation
Background
Tvedestrand is a pretty town in southern Norway, known for its bookshops. With its white wooden houses on narrow cobbled streets, this waterside town is picture-perfect, and thanks to the Norwegian government’s forward-thinking environmental policies, it has a robust clean energy strategy.
Most of Norway’s electricity is generated from hydropower, with some wind and thermal power, too, but the government wants to make the most of all types of renewable energy, particularly solar which can be produced and consumed locally.
Tvedestrand is taking part in a research project, part funded by the government agency, Enova, to develop new ways of managing energy on the local grid. The large solar array on the roof of Tvedestrand's newly built high school, called Tvedestrand Upper Secondary School, is playing a role.
Challenge
Tvedestrand Upper Secondary School, which was opened in 2020, has a 4,400 square meter solar photovoltaic (PV) array covering almost the entire roof of the school building. Constructed from sustainable materials, the school also incorporates energy-efficiency features.
Eaton’s challenge was to manage output from the solar array in a system that also supports the town’s decentralised energy ambitions. This included selling PV-generated energy back to the grid, when possible.
Solution
Eaton designed a system, based on its xStorage Buildings technology. This intelligent, digitalized, energy storage system contributes to the school’s energy strategy by managing the solar array which produces up to 680,000 kWh per year.
The xStorage system substitutes energy from the grid with solar energy to shave peaks in energy consumption during the school day, but it does much more than this, too.
The system monitors the weather, and when there is not enough solar production, it takes off-peak energy from the grid - often during the night - for use when needed. This saves money because off-peak energy is also the cheapest. Conversely, when solar energy production is high, the school has excess energy available in xStorage Buildings to sell to the grid.
Results
The energy bills at Tvedestrand Upper School are reduced by the contribution that xStorage Buildings makes. Peak shaving means that the need to pay peak prices for energy is eliminated. On days when there is not enough solar production, off-peak power from the xStorage Buildings energy storage system is used, instead.
The role of this type of system in balancing the grid is evident. Like any producer, the school wants to sell excess energy that is produced from its solar panels and the income from selling energy offsets energy bills, as well as the initial cost of installing the system.
The grid increasingly wants to buy energy from distributed energy resources, especially at peak times. This is because electrification is increasing demands on the grid.
As the pace of electrification and decarbonisation speeds up across Europe, most countries are examining how to manage distributed energy sources, such as those at Tvedestrand Upper Secondary School.
Although Norway has one of the most sustainable energy supplies in Europe, thanks to its abundant supply of hydropower, the government is nevertheless at the forefront of developing and managing other zero-carbon energy sources, such as solar.
The project at Tvedestrand is a good example of how xStorage Buildings can be used to reduce costs and contribute to decarbonisation goals, too.
