The work carried out by independent technical advisor kiloWattsol on the 34 million (US$46.6 million) project Bardzour on the island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean is promising advances in solar energy storage.
The first PV and storage project to access structured finance is built and operated according to French energy regulating body CRE's specifications.
On completion, the project will become a vital part of the island's energy infrastructure.
Bardzour has a PV power generating system with a nominal power of 9 MWp, and a Li-Ion battery storage solution with a capacity of 9 MWh.
The revolutionary aspect of the project is the fact the operator commits the amount of energy injected into the grid a day before generation, allowing the grid operator to synchronise the Bardzour plant's output with that of conventional power plants on the island. A penalty scheme encourages plant operators to respect the regulations.
A lender consortium of Natixis-Energeco, Agence Française du Développement and Caisse dEpargne for the project developed by AKUO Energy mandated kiloWattsol and its partner NaturalPower to carry out technical due-diligence, including the development of a purpose-built simulation tool to assess the amount of ‘saleable energy' to be generated by the system.
Besides the fact the project is on an island, making the determination of solar irradiation more difficult, the grid is more fragile because of its size and a limited number of generating units by European standards. Those factors make the island an ideal laboratory for grid stability.
