On July 16, Enedis, Engie, Socomec and the Municipality of Cannes inaugurated the Lérins-Grid project.
The Lérins Islands form an archipelago off Cannes with two main inhabited islands: Sainte Marguerite and Saint Honorat. As part of the French InterFlex demo “Nice Smart Valley”, Enedis, its partners and the city of Cannes designed an innovative and environmentally friendly solution to ensure electrical security of the island.
Improving the reliability of the electricity supply on the islands
The Islands are historically supplied through a single submarine cable. If ever this cable is damaged (bad weather, boat anchor, etc.) the archipelago would then be cut off from any power supply, leading the DSO to deploy fossil fuelled generators, inducing noise and GHG emissions.
In the frame of the islanding use case of Nice Smart Valley, two storage systems designed by Socomec have been installed by Engie and Enedis to face such a situation with more environmentally friendly solutions. When disconnected from the mainland grid, the system continues to be remote controlled and supervised from Enedis grid control centre, guaranteeing the same level of quality and safety as during normal operations.
The DSO’s battery storage, acting as a grid forming unit, can take control over the aggregator’s storage, acting as a grid supporting unit, thanks to a wireless communication system developed by Socomec.
A multiservice approach in order to reach economical viability
As any sustainable development project, the economical viability of the project is a key issue. In order to maximize the use of the installed storage systems, Enedis and Engie developed an innovative business model by allowing an aggregator such as ENGIE to use the DSO-owned storage on unregulated market activities when it is not used for islanding.
The mayor of Cannes acknowledged the successful work of the consortium to integrate such an innovative installation while respecting the Natura 2000-protected exceptional landscape and environment. A valuable recognition for the project partners and the subcontractors after two years of work.
« Islanding seems simple, but is in fact a technically complex operation […] we did a lot of laboratory tests prior to the real scale experiment in March » – Carole Ory, territorial director of Enedis Alpes maritimes.
« This project responds to the safety reliability and environmental respect of the power grid » – David Lisnard, Mayor of Cannes.
