Solea Renewables completed and commissioned the world’s first 1 MW ground mounted diesel/PV hybrid electric power plant for industrial mining applications. The decentralized 1 MW DC hybrid PV system was planned and installed for Cronimet Energy South Africa (Pty) Ltd. to fuel Cronimet Mining’s chromium ore operations.
The plant will deliver approximately 1.8 GW of electricity per year, helping the mining company to reduce its daytime diesel consumption. The racking system was planned with 63 tables, each with 66 panels mounted in three vertically mounted PV Panel rows angled at 25° north. The total height of the three panel rows is less than three meters. A total of 4,170 JinkoSolar JKM240P-60 polycrystalline PV panels were installed and 63 three-phase decentralized SMA 17000TL inverters were installed, each with a nominal AC power rating of 17kVA.
The PV system was designed around the mine’s existing primary diesel “island mode” power infrastructure and synchronized to the two existing 800kVa diesel gensets by using SMA’s Fuel Save Controller software. The software monitors and regulates the diesel gensets’ output in a real-time and consistent relationship with the PV plant’s output. The software computes the maximum amount of PV power that the island mode system can safely consume to ensure stability of the supply and the most effective use of renewable PV power.
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