Based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dr Imran Syed is head of industrial power for Enerwhere, designing and implementing hybrid systems that use energy storage. Dr Syed spoke to Andy Colthorpe about some recent project case studies.
Targeting customers with commercial and industrial (C&I) off-grid systems and using battery storage to greatly increase the share of solar they can use onsite, Dr Syed also talked about what challenges lie ahead both technically and business-wise, while also taking us through some of the big picture issues behind the dynamics of deploying energy storage in the Middle East.
“We play the ‘middle game’ – we’re not in the residential space and we’re not in the large grid-connected systems in the hundreds of megawatts,” Syed says of how his Enerwhere business unit is positioned.
“Let’s say anywhere between 500kW up to about 20MW – 30MW and maybe up to 50MW. The core of what we offer is off-grid systems: we go and find systems that are running on diesel generators that are off the grid and we replace those with hybrid systems.
“Historically it’s always been solar-diesel mostly – and there’s a limitation always to how much solar you can throw [in] when there’s a diesel generator because there’s nowhere for that solar to go and because the cost of solar has always been quite competitive when compared to the cost of producing power with diesel.
“That’s getting slightly worse considering the diesel prices right now, but it’s always been in general in a country that’s not subsidised or if you have taxes on diesel then solar against it always makes sense in terms of prices.”
While throwing in as much solar as possible is a good start, without storage, the upper limit of that possibility is constrained to around 20%-30% over a year of energy consumption at an off-grid site. Storage can store any excess solar, while also helping to stabilise the system and run it properly, minimising the use of the diesel generator if not yet eliminating the diesel altogether. A couple of years ago, Syed says, after exploring the possibilities around batteries, Enerwhere “stuck our necks out and bought a Tesla Powerpack system”.
Recent Comments