Eon Implements a Stand-alone Grid Solution in Sweden

Dusseldorf, Germany - Sun, wind and a big battery: These are the ingredients with which the energy company Eon wants to bring the small village of Simris, located in the region of Scania in southern Sweden, onto 100 percent renewable energy.

The energy for the approximately 140 households basically comes from wind turbines with installed capacity of 500 kilowatts (kW) and photovoltaic panels with 440 kW, supported by a battery system with 800 kW capacity.

Being supplied entirely by sun and wind requires balancing the electricity grid and keeping the power quality with accurate voltage and frequency. According to Eon one of the project’s aims is that customers in Simris who are connected to the local energy system will not experience a difference in the quality of power supplied.

In order to support the balancing of the local energy system, customers are engaged to become flexible “prosumers”, by producing energy through PV + battery systems. But they also will be “smart consumers”, by having steerable load assets – like, for example, heat pumps. According to Eon the system is able to cut power peaks and make generation more efficient. To ensure security of supply during the project phase, Simris can be seamlessly re-connected to the regional grid at any time.

“This exciting project shows a possible development for the evolution of smart grids,” says Leonhard Birnbaum, Member of the Eon Board. “With the right technical equipment and intelligent solutions, at Simris we can now demonstrate a decentralized, renewable but also comfortable future of energy even today.”

The flexibility innovations implemented in Simris are part of the EU project InterFlex, which includes six innovative grid projects in Europe. InterFlex aims to explore various smart grid technologies to resolve grid constraints in order to make the growth of renewables in the electric power systems possible.

The InterFlex project, which started on January 1st, 2017, will run for three years. During this time, 20 project partners will investigate the interactions between flexibilities provided by energy market players and the distribution grid, with a particular focus on energy storage, smart charging of electric vehicles, demand response, islanding, grid automation and the integration of different energy carriers (gas, heat, electricity).

Source: IWR Online, 19 Oct 2017