Ta’u Island’s residents live off a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid.

by Amelia Heathman

SolarCity was applauded when it announced its plans for solar roofs earlier this year. Now, it appears it is in the business of creating solar islands.

The island of Ta’u in American Samoa, more than 4,000 miles from the United States’ West Coast, now hosts a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid that can supply nearly 100 per cent of the island’s power needs from renewable energy.

The microgrid is made up of 1.4 megawatts of solar generation capacity from SolarCity and Tesla and six-megawatt hours of battery storage from 60 Tesla Powerpacks. The whole thing took just a year to implement.

Due to the remote nature of the island, its citizens were used to constant power rationing, outages and a high dependency on diesel generators. The installation of the microgrid, however, provides a cost-saving alternative to diesel, and the island’s core services such as the local hospital, schools and police stations don’t have to worry about outages or rationing anymore.

“It’s always sunny out here, and harvesting that energy from the sun will make me sleep a lot more comfortably at night, just knowing I’ll be able to serve my customers,” said Keith Ahsoon, a local resident whose family owns one of the food stores on the island.

The power from the new Ta’u microgrid provides energy independence for the nearly 600 residents of the island. The battery system also allows the residents to use stored solar energy at night, meaning energy will always be available. As well as providing energy, the project will allow the island to significantly save on energy costs and offset the use of more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year.

With concerns over climate change and the effects the heavy use of fossil fuels are having on the planet, more initiatives are taking off to prove the power of solar energy, whether it is SolarCity fueling an entire island or Bertrand Piccard’s Solar Impulse plane flying around the world on only solar energy.

Obviously Ta’u island’s location off the West Coast means it is in a prime location to harness the Sun’s energy, which wouldn’t necessarily work in the UK. Having said that, this is an exciting way to show where the future of solar energy could take us if it was amplified on a larger scale.

The project was funded by the American Samoa Economic Development Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, whilst the microgrid is operated by the American Samoa Power Authority.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/island-tau-solar-energy-solarcity

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.