For the Mbogo Valley Tea Factory losing power did not just mean lost productivity on the factory floor. It also meant lost product, which has a meaningful impact when so many local families rely on the factory's continuous production. Contact online >>
For the Mbogo Valley Tea Factory losing power did not just mean lost productivity on the factory floor. It also meant lost product, which has a meaningful impact when so many local families rely on the factory''s continuous production.
"When the power cuts and the tea is in the factory''s dryers and the air blowers that dry the tea is cut off, the tea burns at the dryer bottom and quality is impacted. The factory either has to throw out that batch of tea or get a lower price in the market for the product," explains Ariya Finergy Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Troy Barrie. "The on-site battery addresses this power quality issue, while the solar array helps address the cost of power."
The Alencon SPOTs are installed between the PV array and the DC bus. The SPOT units perform maximum power point tracking in the PV while having their output follow the voltage on the DC bus as it moves up and down based on the performance of the rest of the microgrid.
According to Ariya''s Barrie, "This microgrid''s architecture offers complete isolation from the grid when the weak local grid fluctuates. The Alencon SPOT unit controls the solar autonomously by reading voltage on the DC bus, which improves the reliability of the project. Not having a safety procedure dependent on a control system in inherently safer."
The DC coupled solar system also improves efficiency during the charge cycle of the batteries by eliminating the need to convert the solar generation from DC to AC only to have to then rectify back to DC to charge the battery.
"The solar also strengthens the stability of the DC bus. The battery inverter is now sourcing its power from a very rigid DC bus because the current is there from both the battery and the DC:DC device. Additionally, we don''t have to sync PV inverters to the battery inverters as we would in an AC coupled system, which further improves stability in how the battery inverter forms the grid and sets the voltage and controls the solar production during load variation" explained Barrie.
Quite uniquely, the Alencon devices feature a technology called galvanic isolation, which allows them to provide complete electromagnetic separation between the PV array and the battery. This patented technology provides the safety of a transformer while keeping all the power generation in DC. Given the cost of the battery system, the most expensive element of the project, the extra protection from faults and damage is highly appreciated.
"The DC-based architecture is seamless when the grid is lost because the DC bus isolates the power grid entirely. Now, when the factory loses the grid, you wouldn''t even notice a light flicker on the shop floor," explained Barrie.
Ariya was formed in 2016 and has since grown its team to 25 staff that bring a combined 100 years of experience in solar PV construction and management, with over 1 GW of systems being designed, constructed and/or financed. For the Mbogo Valley Tea Factory, Ariya not only designed, financed and built the system, it also deployed its own highly innovative software system to monitor and control the microgrid remotely. A screen capture of this system''s performance during a grid outage is shown in Figure 3 below.
"There aren''t a lot of DC:DC suppliers out there. Alencon was very patient in answering our questions during the project. They were willing to learn about our needs. It was clear they had a working product for this application," explained Barrie.
The Kenyan Government, in partnership with the Kenya Off-Grid Solar Access Project (KOSAP), is developing 137 solar minigrids svtodd 12 of the country''s 14 counties.
The project is financed by the World Bank, which approved an International Development Association (IDA) credit of $150 million to fund the project back in 2017.
The solar minigrids will electrify 567 public facilities, including secondary schools, health facilities, and administrative offices. They will also power water pumps for 380 boreholes. The project will give access to electricity to approximately 277,000 households, or 1.5 million people.
"Kenya has deployed minigrids to serve communities that are not connected to the main grid," says Kenya''s Cabinet Secretary Ministry of Energy Davis Chirchir. "Currently, we have about 62 minigrids that are fully operational and 28 which are under construction. We hope to deploy more minigrids to close the energy access gap and ensure universal access to electricity by 2030."
The locations of the 137 minigrids were published in the official gazette in April 2022. Land acquisition is reportedly ongoing, under the guidance of the National Land Commission.
According to KOSAP, some of the challenges that disrupted the rollout of the projects since funding was due to the high cost of products, the low purchasing power of residents, and companies being apprehensive to work in rural areas.
"While Africa remains the least electrified continent, it also has the biggest potential for solar minigrid deployment," said Gabriela Elizondo Azuela, manager of the World Bank''s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP).
"Solar minigrids can reach populations today that would otherwise wait years to be reached by the grid. They have the potential to transform the power sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through World Bank operations and advice to governments, ESMAP is helping take minigrids from a niche to a mainstream solution."
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