After a long development period, the rural project set up to get electrical power to isolated communities in Venezuela was formally completed at the end of 2009. Bornay had provided power during the months of January and February, and now power is up and running in the chosen sites.

The project is made up of hybrid systems - wind power, photovoltaic, and diesel - and supplies electricity to small communities of up to 10, 20, 30, or 40 dwellings.

Each hybrid system is based around Sunny Island equipment manufactured by SMA and powered by a bank of 48Vdc batteries from which an AC micro-network is created at a centralised point.

With the micro-network as the starting point, both wind power and photovoltaic power generation is connected to consumption points to the AC part in parallel through a grid connection inverter so that electricity is consumed directly by the different consumption points and with the excess running to charge the battery bank. This means loss through tension drop is minimalised while maximum generation is assured since equipment is performing with maximum efficiency constantly.

The Sunny Island equipment is constantly controlling the condition of the micro-network in such a way as to use any excess in production to charge batteries or consume it through resistance.

Likewise, if production is inferior to demand and the battery bank does not power up sufficiently, an emergency diesel generator set has been installed and this is automatically activated by the Sunny Island equipment according to needs or the charge state of the batteries.

The system's main characteristics are:

 

System for ten dwellings:

 

     Photovoltaic: 3000 W solar system connected to an SB3300 inverter

     Wind power: Bornay 3000 wind turbine connected to an Aurora 6 kW inverter

     Diesel:  10 kVA generator

     Inverter: 10 kW, 2 SI5048 machines

     Batteries: 48v. 800 Ah C10

 

System for 20 dwellings

 

     Photovoltaic: 5400 W solar system connected to 2 SB3300 inverters

     Wind power: Bornay 6000 wind turbine connected to an Aurora 9,9 kW inverter

     Diesel: 15 kVA generator

     Inverter: 10 kW, 2 SI5048 machines

     Batteries: 2 48v. 800 Ah C10 battery banks

 

 System for 30 dwellings:

 

     Photovoltaic:   8400 W solar system connected to 3 SB3300 inverters

    Wind power:     Bornay 6000 wind turbine connected to an Aurora 9,9 kW inverter

                           Bornay 3000 wind turbine connnected to an Aurora 6 kW inverter

     Diesel:             20 kVA generator

     Inverter:          15 kW, 3 SI5048 machines

     Batteries:          2 48v. 1200 Ah C10 battery banks

 

System for 40 dwellings :

 

     Photovoltaic: 10.800 W solar system connected to a  4 SB3300 inverters

     Wind power: 2 Bornay 6000 wind turbines connected to an Aurora 9,9 Kw inverter

     Diesel:  25 kVA generator

     Inverter: 30 kW, 6 SI5048 machines in parallel

     Batteries: 4 48v. 800 Ah C10 battery banks

The project meant a 2m euro contract for Bornay, which has supplied 155  SI5048 inverters, 126  SB3300 inverters, 24 Bornay 3000 wind turbines, 72 Bornay 6000 wind turbines, as well as other accessories..