Location
Bremer Bay is a small seaside community on the south coast of Western Australia. The town was supplied for many years from Western Australia's South West Interconnected System, the State's main electricity network, which is predominantly powered by coal and gas fired generation.
Site History
Power quality in Bremer Bay suffered in recent years due to the age and length of the power line supplying the town from the nearest substation, approximately 170km distant. These factors made the line subject to frequent faults, which could take considerable time to locate and rectify. The result was poor network outage frequency and duration rates for the town. While numerous high cost network solutions were considered, Diesel and Wind Systems (D&WS) have now installed a new high penetration wind/diesel system.
The Solution
The Bremer Bay solution combines a single 600kW wind turbine with three 320kW LLDTM and one standard 320kW diesel generator. Initially this system is operating as a stand-alone power station. A further stage is planned for this project, which will utilise the flexibility of our new technology. This stage would see the town reconnected to the main grid.
New Technology
D&WS are considering the reconnection of Bremer Bay to the main grid, with a system that will support voltage levels full time. The diesel units would only be utilised for peak load capacity or when a fault occurs on the network. Ultimately short term storage could be added to the Bremer Bay system to provide unparalleled levels of reliability.
For more information about the potential uses of end-of-grid technology within your network, please contact D&WS.