Turned on! The UK’s First Micro Grid Goes Online

This week, Jase Kuriakose an engineer at CAT turned on the UK’s first totally renewable micro grid. The systems works by combining all the wind, solar, bio mass and hydro energy we produce at CAT and storing it in a battery bank. When it needs more energy it simply connects to the grid through an intelligent electronic control device to take more, when we are producing too much it gives the energy to the national grid.

Currently we waste around 65% of energy from power stations by transporting it to our homes, not only that but the electricity sector in the EU is responsible for over 1,2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. Something that Jase says is unsustainable.

“There is a vital need and enormous opportunity to move towards a more sustainable decentralised system, which protects the climate and provide future generations with secure energy.”

The renewable energy produced at C.A.T is fed into a battery bank and connected together through an intelligent electronic control system along with the load and the national grid. At normal operation, the renewable generators provide power to all the loads and excess power will be exported to the grid. In the event of a power failure, the CAT electricity system will be isolated from national grid and the renewable generators will continue to operate like as an island grid system. The intelligent electronic control system will regulate the power generation according to the demand of power. This ensures a continuous efficient operation of renewable generators to achieve the Zero Carbon CAT policy.

The micro grid system will make sure that all the renewable generators at normal conditions will generate electricity and delivers electricity to the precision mains load as first priority and then to the raw mains power. The excess electricity will be then exported to the national grid. In the event of a power failure of the grid the G59 relay will isolate the CAT electricity system with national grid but the generators will continue to generate electricity as an island according to the demand. Once the national grid switched back ON then the system will work as in normal condition. By this way the system makes sure that renewable generators will operate uninterruptedly. The back up battery also ensures that if there is no wind, sun, water or biomass it will provide power for at least 3 hours. After a certain period of time with out any generation and the energy stored in the batteries is too low then the system will disconnect the power to precision mains power and make sure the energy is available for the wise emergency lights, servers and telephone system.