Objective
The aim of this project is to solve, by means of solar energy, the electrical needs of the installations of the "Conselleria de Agricultura de la Xunta de Galicia" in the Cies Islands Natural Park, situated in Vigo-Galicia-Spain. Another objective is to convert the Natural Park into a place of information, formation and education in renewable energies, where the visitors can learn it is possible to satisfy the human energy needs without the destruction of the environment.
Nowadays, the electricity is supplied by a diesel generator of 15KVA, which is a source of noise and pollution. With the present project, we will substitute it for a 12 kWp PV System.
The expected produced PV electric energy is some 14000 kWh/y what it is expected to save some 10000 liters/year of gas-oil with.
The payback time for the investment is expected to be 10,51 years.
There was a bad weather in December, January and mid February and the plant was charging batteries and supplying energy to the DC loads but not the AC loads. From mid February the plant is in full operation and has been not necessary to start the auxiliary generator. The users are very happy because now they have power all day (previously they used a diesel generator that were turn off by night and part of the day). They are very amazed too because they did not believe the PV installations would work properly.
From the month of March 1998, the station has been in full operation. In the months of March, April, May and June, the load has been moderate, because only the houses of workers and guards were in use, and 100% of it was covered by PV, and the production exceeded the demand. In the months of July, August and September, the Information Centre of the Park was open to the public and the load increased significantly. However, the PV station supplied 100% of the load, except a few days in the first half of September in which, because of continuous fogs, it was necessary to use the back-up diesel generator.
The instruction received by the personnel of the Park are to call to the Technical Coordinator as soon the station is malfunctioning, and only has been allowed to commutes between PV system and back-up generator if it is necessary. They dispose of a remote vizualization system in the house of workers so they can see the state of the batteries and the PV production.
It is difficult to convince to this staff in order they optimize the installation. For instance, they have not seen the convenience to move to the central hours of the day the main loads of the appliances. In middle July, there happened an excess of load demand in the Information Center (all the lights and appliances were switched on at the same time) what made that sometimes the inverters maximum power was exceeded and consequently caused a malfunctioning of the inverters. Once the cause of the problem was seen, the personnel was instructed to optimize the lights and appliances switched on simultaneously. Lightnings on 27/08/98 caused the system to go down, no electricity arrived to the houses, even with the back-up generator started, and the personnel of the Park thought the all system had broken down. Notified the Technical Coordinator, it was seen that the system worked properly and that what happened was that all the differentials in the houses were switched off due to the lightnings, circumstance that the staff had not noticed.
1. Innovative technology :
Diesel generators are the usual technology to supply electricity in isolated places in the power range in study. The PV system, thus, may be considered innovative, in attendence to the geographycal area of the emplacement. The inverter used has a special feature of variable frequency for starting motors, when the output pick capacity is exceeded.
2. Context in which the technology is operating
The Cies Islands Natural Park is an archipelago situated at the mouth of the Ria de Vigo (Bay de Vigo) in the South-east of Galicia. The park opens from March to September. July and August are the periods of higher activity. In those months the 800 camping places are covered, and the number of daily visitors reachs 2200. Several cruisers go daily from Vigo. In winter time the only inhabitants are the Guards of the Park.
With the present project we are trying to cover, as a first step, the electrical needs of the Guard and Care Services, being left to the future the needs of the tourist sector (camping & restaurants). the installations to supply electricity, all placed on the Monte Faro island, very closed each other, are :- 2 Forest Guard family houses, - 1 residence for workers, - 1 residence for researchers, - 1 museum and information center, - 1 police house, - street lighting. The electricity is now supplied by a diesel generator of 15 kVA, which is a source of noise and pollution. With the present project that hardware is substituted by a 12 kWp PV System, a battery of 1100 Ah , and a 8kWp inverter. 3. Economic aspects :
The investment costs of the PV System in comparison with those of the Diesel generator can be 10 times higher, what makes difficult to convince the owners of the advantages of a change. There is, nevertheless, some help from the side of the energy saving.
4. Monitoring: The data acquisition system includes the in-built data acquisition in the power conditioning system and a datalogger recording data from a pyranometer, temperature and humidity sensors, as well as wattmeters for each one of the supplied houses, the entire system being connected to a PC on site. This PC is communicated to a PC in the office of the technical director via a GSM data link so the installation can be controlled and monitored off site. The installation is monitored every two or three days by means of the GSM link. In addition, every few weeks an on site inspection is performed.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectrical engineeringelectric energy
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energyphotovoltaic
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
DEM - Demonstration contractsCoordinator
36201 Vigo
Spain