| Power plant products
Useful new life for old solar panels
Artisan Electrics of Cambridge are upgrading a 45 kW, 9 year old solar farm with new panels that will almost double the quantity of electricity generated, making its client energy self sufficient for the whole year.
Normally disposing of old panels is an environmental nightmare, involving tricky logistics and landfill or solvent intensive reclamation processes. While implementing this project Artisan found UK company Cody Earth Solutions, which is working in Mauritania with Mauritanian company Ecobat Solar and is currently installing solar pumps in three locations around the country. It is also building solar panel factories and starting hydrogen production in Port Tanit.
The 10 year old diesel engines powering the irrigation equipment are too expensive or impossible to maintain and the cost of diesel fuel is impoverishing farmers. Cody is able
to take the redundant panels to Thiambene in South Mauritania, where they will support irrigation for the next 20 years. For every 20 days of use, they will save 350 litres of diesel, the equivalent to emitting a tonne of carbon dioxide.
This recycling effort will halve the cost of the project, and there will be less noise and particulate pollution. The solar pumps require much less maintenance than diesel ones and require less energy to operate. It’s a ‘win-win’ solution.
The farmers get energy they can afford, the UK gets more energy from the same land, nothing goes to landfill – and some oil stays in the ground.
Cody Earth Solutions is now seeking more panels released by solar installation upgrades, while Artisan Electrics is looking for similar projects.
Embracing a sustainable plant retrofit
As part of its efforts to achieve net zero fossil carbon dioxide emissions, Mälarenergi has partnered with ABB to upgrade its switchgear with retrofit solutions at its cogeneration plant in Västerås.
By replacing the plant’s ageing circuit breakers with modern Emax2 models – which include ‘Ekip Hi-Touch’ relay protection and energy metering – the circuitry is fully protected, and features new technologies that reduce energy consumption. It also means that most of the critical infrastructure has had its lifespan extended, avoiding the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing an entire new system. ABB states that with regular maintenance and monitoring of the new
components, the life of the plant’s switchgear can now be multiplied indefinitely without the need for replacement.
Mälarenergi’s cogeneration plant in Västerås is one of Sweden’s largest and plays an important role in the sustainable development of the city, with 98 % of all properties in the locality connected to the district heating network. Only renewable and recycled fuels are used in the cogeneration plant, which produces 1800 GWh of heat and 700 GWh of electricity annually and has been upgraded repeatedly with modern technology to maximise uptime and minimise environmental impact since the 1960s.
The retrofit, which was carried out in three
Littelfuse launches compact arc-flash relay
Littelfuse Inc has launched its AF0025 series, a cost-effective arc-flash protection solution in its most compact package for OEM applications. The arc-flash relay detects the light from an arc-flash and rapidly provides a trip signal. With a depth of only 1.82” (46.23 mm), the compact design can be surface or DIN-rail mounted in very small spaces. This makes it very suitable for renewable energy applications such as combiner boxes and inverters, industrial applications including uninterruptible power supplies and variable frequency drives (VFDs),
as well as junction boxes and panels where space is limited.
The use of one or two sensors makes the AF0025 series suitable for small or medium- size panels, with on-board or remote reset capability. No settings or computer are needed for setup.
“The compact AF0025 arc-flash relay detects the problem within five milliseconds and sends a signal to cut the power to reduce or even eliminate the risk to personnel and equipment” commented Richard Dale, product manager at
the Littelfuse industrial business Unit. Additional AF0025 features include fixed light sensitivity which does not require adjustments during installation, an internal fail-safe design providing redundant solid-state circuitry, selectable fail-safe and non-fail-safe operation so trip output can be configured to work with shunt-trip or under-voltage- trip devices for added flexibility, and error output confirmation to indicate if arc-flash is experiencing an error or is actively providing protection.
www.modernpowersystems.com | October 2023 | 45
stages with customised solutions required for each of the switchgear cabinets, also resulted in operational benefits for the plant, mainly in terms of reliability, lower emissions and reduced unplanned downtime.
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