Integrating utility-scale solar PV plants with the grid quickly and cost effectively

Sunny Rich Group combines new fish farming techniques with solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation to reduce the costs and expand the revenue streams of fish farmers in Taiwan.

Fish farming is a major industry in Taiwan, where it is often the traditional preserve of small, family-based businesses. Aquaculture, as it is also known, is risk-filled. Drought, floods and typhoons, as well as disease and pests, can bring the farms close to ruin.

The Sunny Rich concept prevents this. It uses robust greenhouse-like structural frames to protect the farms from extreme weather which, along with automation and artificial intelligence, optimizes farming techniques and operating costs.

Onto these structures Sunny Rich adds solar panels to lower the energy costs and environmental footprint of the farms, as well as to generate revenues by selling the power to the national grid operator, Taiwan Power Company.

To connect the clean energy generated by multiple fish farms spread over an area of several hundred hectares, Sunny Rich required a grid connection.

After a comparison of competing companies’ solutions, Sunny Rich chose a Grid-eXpand modular and prefabricated grid connection from Hitachi Energy that offers a uniquely broad range of benefits that other solutions could not match.

The two companies worked closely together to arrive at the most optimal solution to meet application requirements and grid-code regulations - a modular, prefabricated and containerized 170 kV gas-insulated grid connection that was engineered, assembled and factory-tested by Hitachi Energy ready for fast and easy energization on-site.

With our Grid-eXpand Connect solution we obtained a 25 percent smaller footprint, shortened delivery and energization time by 15 percent and reduced the cost of civil works by 50 percent.* These are huge savings compared to a conventional gas-insulated grid connection.

Sunny Rich also benefited from Hitachi Energy’s world-leading expertise in grid connections, its experience of integrating utility-scale solar power plants with power grids and its long working relationship with Taiwan Power Company. This makes for fast, reliable and efficient delivery and energization.

Hitachi Energy has the world’s largest installed base of grid connection and power quality solutions. We deliver more than 500 solutions annually and have connected more than 1000 renewable energy plants to power grids worldwide. Every year we connect around 3 gigawatts of solar power plants to the grid.

Learn more about Grid-eXpand

* According to calculations made by Hitachi Energy.