Hybrid facility viewed as an industry leader
This hybrid facility came online in 2013 as a partnership between Cowessess First Nation and Saskatchewan Research Council.
Hybrid energy storage facility in southern Saskatchewan is the first of its kind in Canada and could hold that distinction globally as well.
“We need to be careful when we’re using those labels, but as far as I know it is the first of its kind, it very well could be,” said Ryan Jansen, P.Eng., a senior research engineer at the Saskatchewan Research Council, who served as the technical lead on the Cowessess Renewable Energy Storage facility project.
he facility – which generates solar and wind power and stores it in a battery – is located on land owned by Cowessess First Nation, approximately four kilometres east of Regina. It was the country’s first utility-scale hybrid renewable energy system.
Background
The facility came online in 2013 as a partnership between Cowessess First Nation and the SRC.
The project began with an 800-kilowatt wind turbine and 400-kW / 744-kWh lithium-ion battery. In 2018, 1,418 solar panels were added. The 400-kilowatt solar array is fully integrated into the existing wind-battery system.
A hybrid energy storage facility on the Cowessess First Nation is the first of its kind in Canada.
How it Works
The facility can produce more than 2,800 megawatt-hours of energy per year. That’s enough to supply approximately 340 homes.
SaskPower signed a 20-year contract to buy the electricity generated by the project, with profits going to Cowessess First Nation.
The hybrid nature of the facility helps overcome the challenges faced by renewable energy systems.
The solar array generates power only when there is enough sunlight. Output from the wind turbine fluctuates with varying wind speeds. Both systems feed into the battery, which smoothens the combined output by shaving the peaks and filling the valleys.
Electricity can be stored when production is high and used when it’s overcast and the wind is calm.
The wind-solar-battery system also is capable of time-shifting electricity from off-peak to on-peak hours when the electricity has its highest value.
In addition, lithium-ion battery systems can respond to changes in wind and solar power in less than one second. The system has been proven to be capable of smoothing the variable wind-solar output by up to 84 per cent.
This reduction in volatility is needed in order to reliably increase the level of wind and solar penetration on the electrical grid.
Predicting the Weather
The system also is capable of making predictions based on weather patterns.
Weather information was scraped hourly from public weather information services (i.e.: The Weather Network) to determine predicted wind and solar resources. The system then calculated the average predicted power output of the wind-solar hybrid.
“We automatically charged and discharged the battery to clamp the hybrid system’s generation at the predicted power output for the entire hour before recalculating the next hour’s average power and readjusting the battery setpoint once again,” Jansen said.
“When the utility is deciding what assets they need to have in place in the coming hour, they could look at Cowessess and see what we are planning.”
”We could dispatch more power in the morning and again in the evening, two of the peaks times of day,” Jansen explained. “Ultimately, we could marry the hybrid into the SaskPower control centre and when they need power, they could use our battery to help meet the requirements.”
Not Building from Scratch
While considered a ground-breaking facility in terms of capabilities, the technology used wasn’t all developed from scratch. Jansen said they were able to take varying degrees of maturing equipment and intertwine them into a new configuration.
The individual parts were reliable and known. The challenge was being able to integrate them into a system that was going to be reliable.
Saskatchewan Research Council collaborated with the people of Cowessess from Day one of the project, as they own all assets under their company Cowessess Wind Development Ltd, which is part of the Cowessess Ventures Ltd. portfolio of companies.