TES company, GenPlus, wins research grants
An innovative solution by GenPlus, a TES company, has won research grant funding from the Singapore Energy Market Authority and Enterprise Singapore to enhance the mitigation of solar intermittency through the cluster Energy Storage Systems. The idea was the brainchild of Lim Ming Chiat, GenPlus Managing Director, and the co-principal investigator, Experimental Power Grid Centre of Energy Research Institute @NTU(ERI@N).
GenPlus’ “Pre-emptive and Self-adaptive Control for Photovoltaic (PV) Cluster Intermittency Mitigation” Project is one of the 5 projects underway as part of EMA’s S$25million program to develop and test energy storage solutions that help Singapore deliver its 1GWp solar power adoption beyond 2020. Grid stability due to high PV intermittency at large penetration level has always been a major concern especially for a small island country in a tropical climate that is constantly subjected to rapidly changing weather conditions and cloud movement.
Typical PV intermittency mitigation efforts are reactive in nature and focus primarily on the system-level power injection point. The GenPlus research project is unique in tackling the problem at the PV source by utilizing existing PV installations as geospatial sensors coupled with an integrated energy storage system controller. The research project possesses the potential for such an application to be deployed not just in Singapore but anywhere in the world. “It will remove the need for costly sensor deployments currently required for PV intermittency mitigation purposes as the project makes use of existing infrastructure in an innovative way and therefore would have a high degree of commercial and application potential,” said Ming Chiat. “Our target users are any existing PV installations including owners of multiple PV installation who would greatly benefit from our technology in accelerating a return on investment,” he added.
Over the next 2 years, GenPlus and its partners will utilise the grant to develop the control algorithm and the hardware to demonstrate the concept and test-bedding the technology at the actual sites. “It will support government plans to increase solar adoption and drive down the cost of PV installations and energy storage systems,” Lim concluded.
