Microgrid power for remote Western Australian towns

Remote locations such as Marble Bar and Nullagine in Western Australia — towns which are not connected to the grid — would typically rely solely on diesel fuel for their power. Now, a microgrid solution from ABB is enabling the use of multiple energy sources, maximising the intake of solar power generation and minimising diesel fuel generation.

Marble Bar is a town and rock formation in the Pilbara region of north-western Australia. With a population of less than 200 people and a reputation as ‘Australia’s hottest town’, it is a suitable site to host one of the world’s first utility-scale, high-penetration solar PV diesel power stations. The adjoining gold-rush town of Nullagine is home to the second station.

ABB, through its Darwin-based team, worked closely with Horizon Power and SunPower Australia to install these new power stations, which are setting benchmarks — at an 85% peak — for isolated hybrid diesel power systems with extremely high renewable energy generation and conversion.

Stable power output

The Marble Bar and Nullagine power stations each consist of four 320 kW diesel generators and a 300 kW solar array. They utilise some 2000 solar modules and a single axis solar tracking system, which follows the path of the sun throughout the day. The ground-mounted systems were the largest solar tracking systems commissioned in Australia at the time.

The hybrid solution includes a photovoltaic and a diesel generation plant as well as integration and control solutions. The microgrid is equipped with ABB’s PowerStore kinetic flywheel grid-stabilising technology, which enables high solar energy penetration by injecting or absorbing power very fast in order to stabilise fluctuating power output from the solar power plant. ABB’s Microgrid Plus technology will help control the network.

Reduced dependence on fossil fuels

The hybrid microgrid power solution is now supplying both towns with close to 60% of their power through solar generation, saving approximately 400,000 L of diesel fuel and 1100 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

The ability to resolve intermittency issues caused by solar and wind generation in weak power systems enables renewable generation to be increasingly used as a primary power source in many remote communities with zero or limited access to diesel or other types of fossil fuels. About 80 similar ABB installations in a wide variety of applications around the world utilise this powerful green technology, showing that freedom from fossil fuels is a real option now and in the future.