Renewable Systems Planning & Design

Our latest inclusion of Renewable Systems Planning & Design
& microgrid design engineering services brought Automize closer to becoming a fully integrated engineering company in the renewable energy domain. Now, we can provide a one-stop solution for renewable energy system analysis and design.

Our electrical engineers have worked on a wide range of solar projects all over the globe; solar farms ranging from 1 MWp to 333 MWp. Microgrid feasibility analysis from projects for C&I clients, islanded operation of the marijuana growing houses, universities, and hospitals. For microgrid developments, our engineers have completed pre-FEED techno-economic analysis where they have run different operational scenarios with investment at different renewable or alternative energy generation options and determined the best investment scenario with the least payback period.

For such kind of analysis, our engineers use HOMER Pro and HOMER grid optimization software. The deployment of microgrids not only reduces the operational energy cost but also gives our clients independence and reliability against grid outages. Universities and Hospitals prefer to have some degree of reliability in their power delivery options due to the nature of the load. Our engineers have a broad range of experience in designing and deploying residential and utility-scale solar farms.

Using PVsyst, Helioscope, and SAM software, they can find the optimal size of the solar system which would meet the clients’ requirements specifically. Moreover, our engineers are experienced enough to review the drawing and develop the local (US and Canada) compatible format of the electrical and civil design. Our electrical engineers have been involved in large-scale brown and greenfield solar farm development. All the applicable NEC, NESC, and CSA codes are reviewed and, in some cases, local conversion of the required codes has been done by our engineers.

How we do it better? We listen! We find customers need specific fit-for-purpose solutions. Our electrical engineers have an extensive academic background in renewable energy system design, microgrid development, load flow analysis in ETAP, transient analysis in PSCAD, and PSS-E simulation environments. They have worked in the world’s top-tiered solar farm developer companies as well as leading consulting engineering companies in North America and bring in decades worth of hands-on experience. That’s why when we work on a solution at the conceptual stage, we can foresee future issues during construction and commissioning.

Have you done a simulation model of your plant for Renewable Systems Planning & Design optimization? Our electrical engineers can build techno-economic models in the industry-accepted energy system optimization, such as HOMER, RETScreen, SAM, and few others depending on the clients’ specific requirements. Techno-economic optimization on the mentioned software, give our clients a clear idea about different investment options and the pros and cons of each investment.

Thus, before making an investment decision, our clients become aware of the different viable options and the best-returned option. When the project moves to the next design phase, our engineers’ decades-long experience in system design, power flow analysis, and good communication with different equipment vendors help the client complete the design phase efficiently as well as start the procurement phase at the same time.

During the construction phase, our engineers sometimes work as owners’ engineers and sometimes supervise and monitor the construction phase of the work. During the commissioning phase, our engineers actively work along with the vendors’ engineers and technicians to ensure the smooth operation and transition of the project.

Common renewable system planning and design services include

Renewable energy system design for standalone plants and marijuana/other crops growing houses.
Feasibility analysis for microgrid deployment and quantifying GHG emission reduction as per Scope 1 and 2 of the climate agreements.
Designing Energy storage projects for peak demand reduction and use of energy shifting for coincident demand clients.
Identifying the best investment options for energy projects via techno-economic optimization.
Performing load flow analysis, power system transient analysis as per industry standards for interconnected and the isolated energy systems.
Solar farm energy analysis and guaranteed bankable multi-year energy predictions.
Develop complex energy system which is focused to increase the energy supply redundancy as well as a reduction in energy bill in the long run.
Small rooftop and parking lot solar system design
Large-scale solar farm design and performance analysis.
Design and development of microgrid systems (large and small both) including solar PV, Energy Storage, Generators, Wind, thermal storage, and CSP systems.
Technical support to field personnel for start-up
Troubleshooting and debottlenecking existing plant

The service on the renewable energy system design can be divided into the following categories

Feasibility Analysis: Under this service, the feasibility (CapEx Requirements, O&M cost determination, Level 5 to 3 cost estimation, System Sizing, Payback period, and NPV) implementation of a renewable system is determined through detailed calculation. HOMER and in-house optimization software are used for this kind of analysis.

Energy Production Estimation: When a large-scale solar farm, wind farm, and microgrid system is planned to install. Detailed modeling work is required at the beginning to determine the guaranteed energy production over the lifetime of the project. PVSyst, SAM, PV Planner, and Helisocope are used for solar system modeling. WindPro is used wind system modeling.

Microgrid Modeling: When a microgrid is intended to implement as a grid-connected or standalone one, the energy balance and a careful system sizing of the different assets are required. This careful sizing of the different assets and steady-state energy balance is ensured through professional optimization work in HOMER, SAM, and RETScreen are used.

Power System Analysis: When the system sizing is done, based on the project requirement load flow and Short Circuit analysis are done on ETAP. ETAP is widely used software in the industry for this purpose.

Interconnection Study: When a Renewable Systems Planning & Design or microgrid is ready to be connected at the grid, an interconnection study or model is required to be developed as per the interconnecting ISO’s requirement. The time-domain transient model is highly complex and developed in PSCAD or PSS-E as per the ISO’s requirements.

List of projects we were involved with

23 MW Bi-facial solar PV plant

Client Name: Canadian Solar
Location: Suffield, Alberta
Description: Planning and design of this large PV farms development

333 MW DC (275 MW AC) solar farm

Client Name: Confidential
Location: Darlington point, NSW, Australia
Description: Planning and design of this large PV farms development

Fort Severn Microgrid development

Client Name: Canadian Solar
Location: Fort Severn First Nation, Ontario
Description: Planning and design of this microgrid PV farms development.

Cornell University Microgrid development

Client Name: Cornell University
Location: Ithaca, New York
Description: Planning and design of this microgrid PV farms development.

UC San Francisco Microgrid development

Client Name: UC San Francisco
Location: Mission Bay Campus, San Francisco, USA
Description: Planning and design of this microgrid PV farms development

Microgrid for a standalone system

Client Name: Tilray
Location: Ontario, Canada.
Description: Planning and design of the natural gas-based power system for an isolated marijuana growing facilities.

Various power flow analysis

Client Name: Canadian Solar, Nurtrien, and some mining companies
Location: Canada, USA, Australia
Description: Power flow analysis has been done in many projects for these clients as a complementary and required service on the final design of the system.

Multiple PSAD modeling for solar farms

Client Name: Canadian Solar, solar farms in Canada and USA, mining companies in Australia
Location: Canada, USA, Australia
Description: Several solar farms interconnection models are developed and analyzed in PSCAD as per the individual ISOs’ requirements.

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