St. Eustatius Island Electrification - NL Antilles

St. Eustatius, NL Antilles
Island Electrification
2016/2017

St. Eustatius Phase 2

Today, solar energy covers 46% of St. Eustatius’ total electricity need. Grid Forming SCS 2200 inverters allow to operate the island grid for 10.5 hours in Diesel Off-Mode operation with over 100% Solar Power Fraction. In total a 5.9MWh Li-Ion storage facility has been integrated for energy shifting and grid services. Thanks to the SMA Fuel Solution about 4,560 tons CO₂ per year can be saved. The project has been designed and implemented bySMA Sunbelt Energy GmbH.

Plant information
Phase 1+2

Installed PV power
4.15 MWp

Installed storage capacity
5.9 MWh

Diesel capacity
4 MVA

Annual energy yield
6,400 MWh

Annual diesel savings
> 1,700,000 liters

Island Load
~2 MW

SMA System Technology

2 Sunny Central Storage 2200 Grid Forming
1 Fuel Save Controller 2.0 with Automatic Genset Shutdown
2 Sunny Central 1000 in MVPS 2000
1 Sunny Central Storage 1000
74 SMA Sunny Tripower 25000TL-30

St. Eustatius Phase 1

The island of St. Eustatius, located in the Caribbean was formerly fully powered by diesel generators. In the first phase, SMA Sunbelt Energy GmbH integrated 1,9 MWp of PV power and 1 MW of batteries with SMA’s Fuel Save Controller thereby helping the island to reduce its fossil fuel consumption by almost 30% with about 2.240 tons CO₂ per year.

In the first phase of the project the solar plant covered 23% of the island’s total energy requirement. The main challenge was the grid stability due to fast power fluctuations related to cloud movement. SMA Sunbelt integrated a Li-Ion storage facility as typical power application to absorb such fluctuations, provide energy shifting and frequency stability functionalities also at night time. The observed solar fraction reaches 88% at midday.