Grid tie with Diesels? [RE-wrenches]

[Jeff Oldham]

The rule of thumb on this one is 30% PV/inverter power to genset rating. If your two 70kW are in sync then you have 140kW x .3 = 42kW of PV. I feel a better bet is to go w/batteries/inverter and keep the genny's at an ideal load of 75-80% then shut down as soon as batt's are full and transfer. In an economic review you will find that batteries are much cheaper than diesel fuel alone. Diesel fuel costs alone are going to be around $0.27/kWh (depending on delivery costs) and a good battery like the HUP is going to run you about $0.09/kWh (depending on delivery costs!) or about 1/3 per kWh (the inverter cost is barely $0.02/kWh). The main issue I see with the PV/genny parallel is the likelihood of PV impact transparency. With just a 30% load reduction from a diesel genset that is likely not optimally loaded already will only further lower the load and increase genny maintenance and lower fuel/kWh efficiency. In addition your customer may have a hard time seeing a dramatic fuel cost reduction while shorting the top-end genny rebuild intervals. This could be over a $200k investment to get the 42kW of PV in parallel.
Be careful and don't let this bite you in the butt!
 
-jeff o


>From the Solar, Wind and Hydro powered office of Jeff Oldham/Regenerative SOLutions 



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