Power wave

NovoGrid, SSE project saves 300,000kWh of renewable energy at Wexford wind farm

GridBoost automation software saves enough power to power 70 homes for a year
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3 November 2020

NovoGrid, a UCD spin-out that optimises energy delivery, has completed a two-year pilot project with ESB Networks at SSE Renewables’ Richfield wind farm in Co. Wexford.

Using GridBoost, NovoGrid’s proprietary grid edge intelligence software, SSE Renewables saved more than 300,000kWh of renewable electricity – enough to power 70 Irish homes for a year – during the project period. This amount of electricity would have previously been lost in delivery on the grid.

GridBoost a patented technology which automates and removes inefficiencies in renewable generators and electrical grid operations was developed by Prof Andrew Keane and his team at University College Dublin.

Prof Andrew Keane, UCD School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, co-founder and CTO of NovoGrid, said: “Completing the GridBoost pilot project with the ESB and SSE is a key milestone for the company, after a long and rigorous process, resulting in the saving of a significant amount of energy.

“The world is shifting away from fossil fuel to decentralised energy resources and technologies such as GridBoost are needed by grid operators and renewable generators to manage that transition in an efficient and rapidly scalable way.”

A 2015 Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland-funded report found that installing GridBoost across the Irish wind farm fleet would save Irish energy customers €2.2 million in costs and 16,300 tons of CO2 per year.

Such benefits equate to a significant percentage of the emissions targets for the electricity sector by 2030 as laid out in the Government’s Climate Action Plan 2019. In addition, these emission reductions would be achieved at a negative abatement cost.

NovoGrid’s GridBoost is already installed in a number of wind farms in the UK and trials are also under way in Germany.

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