Sector
Public Sector
Data Centres
SOLUTION
On-site Generation
Power Resilience
National Grid Service Contracts
TECHNOLOGY
Battery Energy Storage
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
Energy Management Software
South Staffordshire Council is a district council, working alongside Staffordshire County Council and local parish councils as part of a three-tier local government system.
Challenge
South Staffordshire Council were looking to install a battery storage system that not only provided them with site-wide UPS resilience, but one that was also capable of bolstering income from grid revenue schemes and managing the power from their existing 100kW solar array. With on-site servers responsible for critical data, reliable energy resilience was vital to protect systems in the event of power disruption.
Solution
After a thorough site survey and analysis of requirements, Powerstar recommended the installation of a 250kW Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), providing site-wide UPS. As well as protecting their site and data servers from the risk of power disruption, the battery system can also store excess power from their solar array and manage its export to grid.
Result
The system has already protected the site from five blackouts, providing sitewide resilience for 2.5 hours at peak load. This also allowed South Staffordshire Council to remove their carbon-intensive backup generator while maintaining energy resilience. By managing the energy generated by their rooftop solar, the installation also ensures the site generate from solar without exceeding their agreed export capacity, eliminating the risk of penalties from National Grid.
Providing site-wide ups for
0
hrs
at peak load
Analysis
This graph shows a drop in voltage to 0, denoting a transient power cut at 5:40am on 11 March 2021, for a duration of roughly 3 minutes. The full load for the site was supported by the installed battery UPS system during this time to prevent any loss of power, keeping all electrical equipment, including IT systems and servers, up and running as normal.
