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The CILSS project, a large-scale application of photovoltaics in West-Africa
Renewable Energy, Vol.5, Part I, pp. 237-246, 1994
Pergamon
Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain 0960-1481/94 $7.00+0.00
The CILSS Project, a Lage-scale Application of Photovoltaics in West-Africa
E. Cunow, S. Makukatin, M Thei6en and H. Aulich Siemens Solar GmbH, Frankfurter Ring 152 D - 80807 Munich, Germany phone + 43-89 / 3500-2805 fax + 43-89 / 3500-2574
Abstract: In nine West-African countries one of the biggest photovoltaic programs financed by the European Community is in an advanced realisation phase. The program started in the year 1991. The objective of the program is to improve at short term and permanently the living conditions of the population in remote regions and thus to counteract emigration to the cities. The availability of drinking water is of primary importance, followed by field irrigation and cultivation of agricultural crops and supply of electricity to small communities are provided with their first electricity. The following describes the 1200 kWp project in detail, deals with the qualification of components and systems, states basic facts on system design and reports on first operating results and experiences.
General CILSS is a community of states comprising nine countries of the Sahel zone and was founded in 1973. The member states are: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Chad. These countries suffered greatly from the period of drought between 1968 and 1974. The regional program established to make use of photovoltaic energy (PRS) was funded by the European Community with 34 million ECU as a non-repayable aid. With 1200 kWp of installed generator power the PRS is one of the biggest photovoltaic programs in the world.
237
238
Siemens Solar's part in the project The overall program was divided into three sub-projects of which Siemens Solar was awarded the first section. In this part, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mauritania and Senegal are the recipients of the systems. All in all Siemens Solar will supply 550 kWp of generator power to these countries which is needed for the power supply of: 330 pumping systems 63 cooling systems 240 lighting systems 36 battery charging systems for lead-acid and nickel-cadmium batteries Supply lot 1 has the highest share of pumping systems with large capacity. The contract amounts to approx. 30 million German marks (supply, montage and maintenance). Table 1 shows the pumping systems, Table 2 the other small systems
Types
Subtypes
P1
P1- B1 P1- B2
P2
Q (m3/day)
HxQ (m4/day)
5 7
36 25
180
P2-B1 P2-B2
5 15
68 22
340
P3
P3-1 P3-2
20 30
18 12
360
P4
P4-1 P4-2 P4-3
20 30 45
41 27 18
820
P5
P5-1 P5-2 P5-3
20 30 45
67 44 29
1340
P6
P6-1 P6-2 P6-3
20 45 75
102 45 27
2050
Table 1
Head(m)
Types of Pumping Systems, Subtypes, Nominal Head, Hydraulic Energy
239
Types of Application E1 E2 R C1 C2
Peak Power (Wp)
Lighting: 3 fluo Ips. 50 Lighting: 8 fluo Ips. 150 Medical fridges 300 Cd-Ni R20 accu charger 100 Pb-Sb battery charger 200
Table 2
Nr. of Systems 173 67 63 15 21
Types of Community Systems
The contract work of Siemens Solar consists not only in supplying components, systems, etc., but also to establish of a service network, training of local partners and supporting activities. The supplier Siemens Solar has to give a five years guarantee for all systems. At present, an accompanying measuring program for selected locations and plants is being initiated.
Project organisation The execution and coordination of this large-scale contract required the establishment of a complex project organisation. Subcontractors and local firms were integrated in the performance of the work. In addition, the selection of system sizes (for pumping systems) in connection with newly built wells was assisted by Siemens Solar. Today the cooperation of all parties concerned is a well-adjusted routine.
240
Qualification of Components and Material The contract awarding EC office imposed very high requirements on components and material quality of this large-scale project. Consequently, the contractor Siemens Solar had to carry outextensive market research in order to find suitable accessories and components at acceptable prices and quality. The high quality requirement is however justified since the long service life and ruggedness of the systems must be assured. The EC commissioned several independent institutions with the testing of the key components for conformity with the requirements of the invitation to tender: • • •
in Germany: T 0 V (technical inspection authority) Rheinland, Cologne in England: GRES (Global Renewable Energy Services), Swindon in France: LVT / CEA, Cadarache
•
in Spain:
CIMAT, Madrid
In addition to the component and system testing these institutions also had to check the system designs according to the tender requirements. Thus, for instance, T 0 V Rheinland thoroughly tested among other things the pump inverters - one of the key components - for their suitability. The test criteria, among other things comprised: • Performance •
Efficiency
•
Temperature and climate tests
•
Electrical safety
•
Examination of packaged devices after a drop (test) from a height of I m
Apart from that the fabrication processes of the inverter suppliers were audited. During these tests some possibilities of optimising the devices were revealed and integrated in production. Although these procedures resulted in a considerable cost increase, the later field use justified these tests. Finally this has led to an extraordinarily high product quality of the inverters. It could be shown that all devices work perfectly under hard environmental conditions in the field and are highly reliable, which is not always the case for other inverters in photovoltaics.
241
These highly reliable inverters are now commercially available to the benefit of other customers. The ISPRA certificate applies as a qualification proof for all our PV modules. No problems arose for any of the Siemens Solar systems in complying with the module data during the verification of the PV generator power. The reason for this positive result is the high quality of modules produced in our Munich facility.
System design of pumps versus actual quantity of water delivered The basis for the system design is specified as a standard day with 6 kW/day for the WestAfrican region and a daily water quantity/volume. A tolerance of -10% to +20% is admissible for the water output. All Siemens Solar design values (700 Wp to 3.8 kWp rated generator power) were checked and confirmed by the customer. This exact design accuracy was possible thanks to the profound system knowledge and experience of Siemens Solar.
242
The following 4-quadrant diagram shows all important relations between insolation, module performance, delivery head, water level dynamics and water volume delivered.
System Characteristics
HWnactual delivery/
P ?i
0 ..............
Q
=
,rr.~,at,oncu~~~ (h)
J j ~ ---~lowrate curve
'/h)
243
In this way characteristic variations for various frequencies were determined for all centrifugal pumps used. It is well known that no qualified statements on the delivery capacities of the systems can be made without these data (see following figure).
NATER HEAD UERSUS FLON RNTE C H A R A C T E R I S T I C 80--
PARAMETER:
FREQUENCY
IHz]
NND E F F I C I E N C Y
[HI.
?0-PARANETER UALUES: /
60-"
Z
/ '/ ...." - - .... ~/" ,/ "'--':/ -
58--
10,0 15.0
~: x
20.0
X 7. X
25.0 30.0
/
49-._
6~. 0 Hz 5 5 . Q Hz 5 0 . • Hz Hz
30-¢ 'T
";
2g--
~-,-~
.....
""--
~ ~ - ~
"-
__
4e. •
x=
10--
0 0
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
1
2
3
4
5
G
?
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
F L O N RATE [ ~ 3 / h ]
Preliminary operating results A) Pumping systems The first PV pumping systems from Siemens Solar in the project were installed in early 1991. Up to April 1994, 55 out of a total of 330 deep-well pumping systems had been installed. All systems work perfectly and without any remarkable problems. The population can rely on the precalculated water quantities. The before mentioned 55 systems provided approx. 270 000 hours of trouble-free operation up to the end of April 1994.
244
The water yield of the systems up to now amount to the remarkable water volume of approx. 1 200 000 m 3 ! This extraordinary result was only possible by the cooperation of all participants and is probably unique in this order of magnitude. It should be stressed that the contribution of the local companies was very important to achieve this success. Following a well-structured instruction these local companies •
assembled
•
reliably installed and
• perfectly maintained the pumping systems.
B) Community Systems Up to April "94 30 community systems out of 339 are installed, e.g. 11 cooling systems used vor vaccin in first aid hospitals in Mauretania, 6 lighting systems in schools in Cape Verde. All systems work without any troubles and with satisfaction for the users. It has to be stated that an excellent level of knowledge regarding system understanding and knowledge of the components, etc. has been established grown within in the CILSS organisation. The local firms involved with the systems acquired particular technical knowledge and are now familiar with PV systems. Their experience should form the basis for further successful applications and should be used in future projects. A special problem came from tthe village committees especially in concern with community systems regarding maintanance cost. Is is hard to understand for the people why they should pay a certain amount of money for systems which work well. It has here to be explained that this money is destinated for a fund for maintenance in the future and to e.g. replace some components. On the other hand good maintenance is essential for a long livetime and reliability of the systems.
245
Problems with operating systems Only problems of minor nature are to be reported for the Siemens Solar Systems. It turned out that some systems in Gambia are located in a region often frequented by lightning. To date four lightning barriers at the input of the 3.5 kVA inverters have been destroyed by indirect lightning strikes, however, the inverters remained fully operational. The protective devices have fullfilled their protective function. They were replaced without any problem by spare parts available in the country. A completely normal procedure. The second and to date last event was the failure of four float swiches in boreholes. This fault was caused by corroding well casings and remained by an aditional float switch filter. As an intermediate result it can be stated that no PV-specific problems occurred.
Experience and findings After more than three years of the project we can draw some intermediate conclusions: . The comprehensive EC project which includes high requirements on the system quality integration of local firms local after-sales-service training of local partners integration of country-related spare part stocking has a high potential for success and promises to be of exemplary nature for future projects. 2. Photovoltaics - and this project especially - again proves to be a reliable technology offering very important services to rual communities off the electric grid. 3. Instructed and trained partners in developing countries are imperative for the successful implementation of photovoltaic applications. . The high quality and sturdy products developed by Siemens Solar have shown excellent performance so far. In this context independent authorized inspection institutes play an inportant role for the success of large-scale projects.
246 5. Through projects like CILSS manufacturers/suppliers of PV systems may optimise their
systems and components for appropriate applications and can prove their reliability through large-scale application. This in turn is beneficial for the next customers increasing confidence in photovoltaics.
References F. Kabore, PV Energy for a Sustained and Social Development in the Sahel Region; In the Yearbook of Renewable Energy 1994; P. 146 - 149
Pergamon
Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain 0960-1481/94 $7.00+0.00
The CILSS Project, a Lage-scale Application of Photovoltaics in West-Africa
E. Cunow, S. Makukatin, M Thei6en and H. Aulich Siemens Solar GmbH, Frankfurter Ring 152 D - 80807 Munich, Germany phone + 43-89 / 3500-2805 fax + 43-89 / 3500-2574
Abstract: In nine West-African countries one of the biggest photovoltaic programs financed by the European Community is in an advanced realisation phase. The program started in the year 1991. The objective of the program is to improve at short term and permanently the living conditions of the population in remote regions and thus to counteract emigration to the cities. The availability of drinking water is of primary importance, followed by field irrigation and cultivation of agricultural crops and supply of electricity to small communities are provided with their first electricity. The following describes the 1200 kWp project in detail, deals with the qualification of components and systems, states basic facts on system design and reports on first operating results and experiences.
General CILSS is a community of states comprising nine countries of the Sahel zone and was founded in 1973. The member states are: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Chad. These countries suffered greatly from the period of drought between 1968 and 1974. The regional program established to make use of photovoltaic energy (PRS) was funded by the European Community with 34 million ECU as a non-repayable aid. With 1200 kWp of installed generator power the PRS is one of the biggest photovoltaic programs in the world.
237
238
Siemens Solar's part in the project The overall program was divided into three sub-projects of which Siemens Solar was awarded the first section. In this part, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mauritania and Senegal are the recipients of the systems. All in all Siemens Solar will supply 550 kWp of generator power to these countries which is needed for the power supply of: 330 pumping systems 63 cooling systems 240 lighting systems 36 battery charging systems for lead-acid and nickel-cadmium batteries Supply lot 1 has the highest share of pumping systems with large capacity. The contract amounts to approx. 30 million German marks (supply, montage and maintenance). Table 1 shows the pumping systems, Table 2 the other small systems
Types
Subtypes
P1
P1- B1 P1- B2
P2
Q (m3/day)
HxQ (m4/day)
5 7
36 25
180
P2-B1 P2-B2
5 15
68 22
340
P3
P3-1 P3-2
20 30
18 12
360
P4
P4-1 P4-2 P4-3
20 30 45
41 27 18
820
P5
P5-1 P5-2 P5-3
20 30 45
67 44 29
1340
P6
P6-1 P6-2 P6-3
20 45 75
102 45 27
2050
Table 1
Head(m)
Types of Pumping Systems, Subtypes, Nominal Head, Hydraulic Energy
239
Types of Application E1 E2 R C1 C2
Peak Power (Wp)
Lighting: 3 fluo Ips. 50 Lighting: 8 fluo Ips. 150 Medical fridges 300 Cd-Ni R20 accu charger 100 Pb-Sb battery charger 200
Table 2
Nr. of Systems 173 67 63 15 21
Types of Community Systems
The contract work of Siemens Solar consists not only in supplying components, systems, etc., but also to establish of a service network, training of local partners and supporting activities. The supplier Siemens Solar has to give a five years guarantee for all systems. At present, an accompanying measuring program for selected locations and plants is being initiated.
Project organisation The execution and coordination of this large-scale contract required the establishment of a complex project organisation. Subcontractors and local firms were integrated in the performance of the work. In addition, the selection of system sizes (for pumping systems) in connection with newly built wells was assisted by Siemens Solar. Today the cooperation of all parties concerned is a well-adjusted routine.
240
Qualification of Components and Material The contract awarding EC office imposed very high requirements on components and material quality of this large-scale project. Consequently, the contractor Siemens Solar had to carry outextensive market research in order to find suitable accessories and components at acceptable prices and quality. The high quality requirement is however justified since the long service life and ruggedness of the systems must be assured. The EC commissioned several independent institutions with the testing of the key components for conformity with the requirements of the invitation to tender: • • •
in Germany: T 0 V (technical inspection authority) Rheinland, Cologne in England: GRES (Global Renewable Energy Services), Swindon in France: LVT / CEA, Cadarache
•
in Spain:
CIMAT, Madrid
In addition to the component and system testing these institutions also had to check the system designs according to the tender requirements. Thus, for instance, T 0 V Rheinland thoroughly tested among other things the pump inverters - one of the key components - for their suitability. The test criteria, among other things comprised: • Performance •
Efficiency
•
Temperature and climate tests
•
Electrical safety
•
Examination of packaged devices after a drop (test) from a height of I m
Apart from that the fabrication processes of the inverter suppliers were audited. During these tests some possibilities of optimising the devices were revealed and integrated in production. Although these procedures resulted in a considerable cost increase, the later field use justified these tests. Finally this has led to an extraordinarily high product quality of the inverters. It could be shown that all devices work perfectly under hard environmental conditions in the field and are highly reliable, which is not always the case for other inverters in photovoltaics.
241
These highly reliable inverters are now commercially available to the benefit of other customers. The ISPRA certificate applies as a qualification proof for all our PV modules. No problems arose for any of the Siemens Solar systems in complying with the module data during the verification of the PV generator power. The reason for this positive result is the high quality of modules produced in our Munich facility.
System design of pumps versus actual quantity of water delivered The basis for the system design is specified as a standard day with 6 kW/day for the WestAfrican region and a daily water quantity/volume. A tolerance of -10% to +20% is admissible for the water output. All Siemens Solar design values (700 Wp to 3.8 kWp rated generator power) were checked and confirmed by the customer. This exact design accuracy was possible thanks to the profound system knowledge and experience of Siemens Solar.
242
The following 4-quadrant diagram shows all important relations between insolation, module performance, delivery head, water level dynamics and water volume delivered.
System Characteristics
HWnactual delivery/
P ?i
0 ..............
Q
=
,rr.~,at,oncu~~~ (h)
J j ~ ---~lowrate curve
'/h)
243
In this way characteristic variations for various frequencies were determined for all centrifugal pumps used. It is well known that no qualified statements on the delivery capacities of the systems can be made without these data (see following figure).
NATER HEAD UERSUS FLON RNTE C H A R A C T E R I S T I C 80--
PARAMETER:
FREQUENCY
IHz]
NND E F F I C I E N C Y
[HI.
?0-PARANETER UALUES: /
60-"
Z
/ '/ ...." - - .... ~/" ,/ "'--':/ -
58--
10,0 15.0
~: x
20.0
X 7. X
25.0 30.0
/
49-._
6~. 0 Hz 5 5 . Q Hz 5 0 . • Hz Hz
30-¢ 'T
";
2g--
~-,-~
.....
""--
~ ~ - ~
"-
__
4e. •
x=
10--
0 0
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
1
2
3
4
5
G
?
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
F L O N RATE [ ~ 3 / h ]
Preliminary operating results A) Pumping systems The first PV pumping systems from Siemens Solar in the project were installed in early 1991. Up to April 1994, 55 out of a total of 330 deep-well pumping systems had been installed. All systems work perfectly and without any remarkable problems. The population can rely on the precalculated water quantities. The before mentioned 55 systems provided approx. 270 000 hours of trouble-free operation up to the end of April 1994.
244
The water yield of the systems up to now amount to the remarkable water volume of approx. 1 200 000 m 3 ! This extraordinary result was only possible by the cooperation of all participants and is probably unique in this order of magnitude. It should be stressed that the contribution of the local companies was very important to achieve this success. Following a well-structured instruction these local companies •
assembled
•
reliably installed and
• perfectly maintained the pumping systems.
B) Community Systems Up to April "94 30 community systems out of 339 are installed, e.g. 11 cooling systems used vor vaccin in first aid hospitals in Mauretania, 6 lighting systems in schools in Cape Verde. All systems work without any troubles and with satisfaction for the users. It has to be stated that an excellent level of knowledge regarding system understanding and knowledge of the components, etc. has been established grown within in the CILSS organisation. The local firms involved with the systems acquired particular technical knowledge and are now familiar with PV systems. Their experience should form the basis for further successful applications and should be used in future projects. A special problem came from tthe village committees especially in concern with community systems regarding maintanance cost. Is is hard to understand for the people why they should pay a certain amount of money for systems which work well. It has here to be explained that this money is destinated for a fund for maintenance in the future and to e.g. replace some components. On the other hand good maintenance is essential for a long livetime and reliability of the systems.
245
Problems with operating systems Only problems of minor nature are to be reported for the Siemens Solar Systems. It turned out that some systems in Gambia are located in a region often frequented by lightning. To date four lightning barriers at the input of the 3.5 kVA inverters have been destroyed by indirect lightning strikes, however, the inverters remained fully operational. The protective devices have fullfilled their protective function. They were replaced without any problem by spare parts available in the country. A completely normal procedure. The second and to date last event was the failure of four float swiches in boreholes. This fault was caused by corroding well casings and remained by an aditional float switch filter. As an intermediate result it can be stated that no PV-specific problems occurred.
Experience and findings After more than three years of the project we can draw some intermediate conclusions: . The comprehensive EC project which includes high requirements on the system quality integration of local firms local after-sales-service training of local partners integration of country-related spare part stocking has a high potential for success and promises to be of exemplary nature for future projects. 2. Photovoltaics - and this project especially - again proves to be a reliable technology offering very important services to rual communities off the electric grid. 3. Instructed and trained partners in developing countries are imperative for the successful implementation of photovoltaic applications. . The high quality and sturdy products developed by Siemens Solar have shown excellent performance so far. In this context independent authorized inspection institutes play an inportant role for the success of large-scale projects.
246 5. Through projects like CILSS manufacturers/suppliers of PV systems may optimise their
systems and components for appropriate applications and can prove their reliability through large-scale application. This in turn is beneficial for the next customers increasing confidence in photovoltaics.
References F. Kabore, PV Energy for a Sustained and Social Development in the Sahel Region; In the Yearbook of Renewable Energy 1994; P. 146 - 149