CTG Brasil will develop the Aneel PDI project at UHE Ilha Solteira

04.07.2024

Technical studies in partnership with Senai Pernambuco, Thymos Energia and Wisebyte will be conducted to boost clean energy generation and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels

CTG Brasil, one of the leaders in clean energy generation in the country, is developing together with the SENAI Institute of Innovation for Information and Communication Technologies (ISI-TICs), the innovation arm of SENAI Pernambuco, Thymos Energia and Wisebyte a PDI ANEEL project of an energy storage system in batteries and distributed generation, which will include the construction of an electrochemical energy storage laboratory (batteries) connected to a small solar photovoltaic plant with approximately 900 solar modules on the premises of the Ilha Solteira Hydroelectric Plant, located in Paraná River, between the municipalities of Ilha Solteira and Selvíria. "This CTG Brasil project is an important step towards boosting clean generation and reducing the cost of electricity, as it will develop battery solutions to increase generation flexibility and system stability", says Sergio Fonseca, Director of Business Development and PDI from CTG Brasil.

"The project is innovative and contributes greatly to the development of an ancillary services market in Brazil, complementary to traditional energy and capacity products. We are going to develop an important case that will be tested in practice and give us subsidies to contribute to the construction of regulation for these resources", says Jovanio Santos, Director of New Business at Thymos Energia.

The technical studies, which will be conducted together with ISI-TICs/SENAI Pernambuco, Thymos Energia and Wisebyte, will evaluate how battery systems, which have enormous potential uses, can contribute to non-dispatchable sources by increasing the flexibility of generation, supply of ancillary services, control of network fluctuations, and other services. The Project will also develop computational systems that will use Artificial intelligence technologies to indicate a better cost-benefit ratio for the implementation of Utility Scale Battery (USB) in hydroelectric, wind or solar generation assets. Finally, the studies will contribute to the development of regulation and procedures for the use of batteries on a large scale in the Brazilian electrical system.

The installed capacity of the photovoltaic plant will be 500 kWp (suggestion to describe the acronym?). With this, the expectation is to generate electrical energy equivalent to the consumption of more than 380 homes. The energy storage capacity of the batteries is 100 kWh, which was designed in accordance with the studies planned for the laboratory. Initially, the energy generated will only meet CTG Brasil's consumption within the local distributor's coverage area. However, complementary ways of using the energy generated will be evaluated.

The total invested will be around R$ 15 million (more than R$ 12 million from CTG Brasil through ANEEL's Research and Development program; and the rest from resources from the SENAI Innovation Platform for Industry and counterparts from ISI -TICs/SENAI Pernambuco, Thymos Energia and Wisebyte) and will be developed within a period of 18 months. The work will begin in the second half of 2024 and will be completed by the first half of 2025. The company JA Solar will be the supplier of photovoltaic solar modules.

This plant will also function as a training laboratory, a mini-plant at CTG Brasil's Arinos Solar Complex, currently under construction in the state of Minas Gerais. Thus, this R&D project will serve in the future as a training unit for CTG Brasil's technical teams, allowing them to carry out tests and simulations of new types of equipment as part of their training. Currently, CTG Brasil has investments in 17 hydroelectric plants and 11 wind farms, making it one of the leaders in energy generation in the country with 9.3 GW of installed capacity and under construction.

SENAI's general director, Gustavo Leal, highlights that the solar plant project is one of the initiatives resulting from the five-year cooperation agreement between the institution and CTG Brasil for Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) in energy. "Once CTG Brasil's demand was identified, we mobilized different national and international technology-based ecosystems and institutions, including our Innovation Institutes, to develop the solution", explains Leal.

Another new feature of the partnership with CTG Brasil for this year was the International Mobility Notice for China. The 27 SENAI Innovation Institutes presented proposals and three researchers will be selected to learn about China's energy innovation ecosystem. They travel in the second semester and stay for around three months.