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Dear Friends,
I am delighted to announce the release of HOMER 2.75, the first commercial version of HOMER software since HOMER Energy licensed it from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We have enhanced HOMER to add some important new storage features, - all of which allow you to incorporate increasing proportions of renewable energy in your hybrid systems.
You will notice that we are charging a minimal fee for this new version of HOMER, but HOMER Legacy (version 2.68) will always remain free. We hope you will understand that without some revenues, HOMER Energy would not be able to continue enhancing HOMER in response to the many excellent suggestions we receive from our customers.
Peter Lilienthal, CEO, HOMER Energy |
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The new version of HOMER includes the ability to model new storage technologies, such as flywheels and zinc bromine flow batteries, both of which will allow designers to develop larger systems that have a higher contribution from renewable energy:
- HOMER 2.75 will be available for a 14-day trial period
- Retail price is $99 with a 50% discount for existing users of v2.68.
- You must enter your existing serial number to purchase the new version at the discount rate.
- Download HOMER 2.75 here.
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| Case Study: Powercorp, Australia |
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| PowerStore Flywheel in Antarctica |
Powercorp is working with Meridian Energy (NZ), on an exciting project which will allow important US/NZ Antarctic science activities to proceed with a far smaller environmental footprint including lower carbon emissions and reduction of other potential environmental problems such as diesel spills.
The project is on Ross Island, Antarctica, where Scott Base (NZ) and McMurdo Base (US) are located. Powercorp was asked to help interconnect the two existing diesel stations that currently power the US and NZ bases and to integrate the three 330K wind turbines there by providing the necessary network control and stabilizing technologies. The two power systems operate at different frequencies 50Hz (NZ) and 60Hz (US) and had to be joined with a specially built 1500 kVA rated inverter system.
With the completion of Phase 1 of the Ross Island system in 2009, the wind farm provides Ross Island with up to 1000kW of clean renewable energy, enough to power all of the Scott Base and contribute to the daily electrical demand on the McMurdo Base.
"Building a business case is one of the main challenges for RE systems and tools such as the economic optimisation tool – HOMER, have become an industry standard," said Cheryl Loone, of Australia-based Powercorp. Powercorp, which is a world leader in the design of remote, high-penetration renewable energy systems, uses HOMER to project their capital and operating expenses, to assess the economic feasibility of a system, optimize the system design and explore the strengths of the economic results. Learn more |
| New Flywheel Technologies Bolster Hybrid Systems |
Ever since the days of Leonardo DaVinci, flywheels have captured our imaginations and lured people with hopes of cheap energy. A flywheel uses its inertia to store kinetic or rotational energy.
Now, with increasing efforts to integrate variable renewable resources into our power generation mix, we face the challenge of maintaining stable systems with sufficient reserves to keep energy inputs reliable and stable. These are often called “standby” or “spinning” reserves because they can be called upon in an instant to deliver a large burst of energy and prevent an interruption in energy supply. Flywheels have just the right attributes, and the new 2.75 versio of HOMER includes the ability to model flywheels in your system.
Flywheels are very efficient (can be as high as 90%), and particularly compared to battery storage systems require relatively little maintenance and have long lifetimes. Flywheels made for the energy industry can be very heavy, weighing several tons; they spin extraordinarily fast (one brand has a rim speed of Mach 2 or about 1500 mph), and thus may have to be operated in a vacuum, suspended or levitated upon magnetic bearings.
A array or chain of flywheels can provide enhanced reliability for utility-scale grids, delivering bursts of power in the megawatt range for minutes at a time. Most importantly, flywheel technology can enable the use of greater proportion of renewable energy components in a hybrid power system, in some cases up to 80% renewable energy. |
| HOMER Software Tip |
Users often wonder why we have two different places to put in the quantity of wind turbines and batteries or the capacity of PV, generators, or the inverter. The spreadsheet on the left in the Inputs Window defines a cost curve, while the Sizes to Consider list on the right tells HOMER what sizes to actually model. Although, by default HOMER puts the sizes from the cost table into the Sizes to Consider list, you can override that and get a lot of flexibility to consider factors, such as quantity discounts.
In this example, we are telling HOMER that the first 1 kW of PV costs $10,000 and the second kW costs $8000. After than any additional PV is only $5000. In addition to a quantity discount, this could reflect economies of scale in shipping or installation. Since one of the main functions of HOMER is to help you figure what the best size is we didn’t want you to have to enter a separate price for every size you want to consider. In this example, we wanted to consider 5 kW and HOMER figured out that would cost $33,000 without having to enter that cost directly.
by Peter Lilienthal
Do you have a tip for HOMER users? If so, please share it with us in the HOMER users community here |
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