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Ten years ago, a pair of sparks from Riverina went north and established an electrical service company in Mackay, Queensland, to serve the mining industry.

Today, Jason Sharam (Managing Director) and Peter Shaw (CEO) run an electrical service business with a very significant difference: they now have something that may be close to unique-an off-grid solar manufacturing facility, "100% "Renewable" as its goal.

The manufacturing aspect of the business is to build a series of customized power solutions for remote areas (such as mining farms)-EcoSkid portable power system, EcoHub trailer-sized power pack, solar pipeline monitoring system, etc.

Products such as EcoSkid portable emergency power supplies are produced in the off-grid Mackay factory of Linked Group Services

SolarQuotes spoke with Sharam to understand why Linked Group Services pursues such ambitious corporate goals-and in the heart of Queensland's mining industry.

Creating a fully renewable manufacturing facility is a more daunting goal than a home, but it is an important goal of Linked Group Services. Sharam told SolarQuotes that the company is providing customers with its own proof of concept:

"I have been working off-grid for 12 years. I want to show what is possible, using currently available technology."

When he first decided to create a microgrid two years ago, the company calculated its return on investment for six and a half years.

The microgrid has a lot of power supply, but there is enough space to install solar panels: a 4,000-square-meter manufacturing facility, 900-square-meter parking lot, 1,200-square-meter two-story office space, and another 500-square-meter warehouse.

Energy-consuming equipment is naturally located in the manufacturing building: there are nine welding stations, a ten-ton bridge crane and various metal processing machines.

The microgrid that keeps everything running includes:

There are a large number of inverters on site, Fronius, Enphase and Sungrow are all in use. Sharam said the reason is simple: he wants to prove that the microgrid concept has nothing to do with suppliers.

The Tesla battery manages its charging status: when the battery is fully charged, it pushes the AC frequency above 50Hz, and the inverter stops the charging current. When it needs to be charged, the frequency drops below 50Hz and the inverter accelerates.

The facility also has a free EV charger that can consume part of the electricity when the output is higher than the consumption.

Now, standby generators are the only factor that prevents the facility from being 100% renewable, and Sharam has a plan for this. He told SolarQuotes that he hopes to find a suitable electrolyzer and compressor unit so that the company can produce hydrogen on site and burn hydrogen instead of liquefied petroleum gas when backup power is needed.

Even so, he said, the usage rate of generators is very low, and its LPG tanks have only been filled up twice in two years.

When you supply power to an industrial site, monitoring is critical, so there is a PLC connected to the Tesla battery and inverter via Modbus. Sharam said this was a simple enough setup once the vendor revealed their Modbus registers (he added that everyone passed it in the end).

From the office to the factory floor, Linked Group Services is off-grid and pursuing 100% renewable energy

“Once we get rid of the LPG turbines, we will have a net value of zero. This is one of our goals to use renewable energy in a region to manufacture Australian products. No matter where you are, you can create your own base. Holland Energy. You can control costs and supply reliability."

He pointed out that it’s easy to forget how much trouble manufacturers in the tropics will have in terms of supply reliability:

"We live in a major hurricane area. If there is a power outage during a storm, it will be out of power for a week."

This makes it worthwhile to go down the 100% renewable energy route: customers get electricity at a fixed price, they have energy security, and they are independent of the grid.

The biggest "problem" in designing this type of system is matching the system capacity to the load in the manufacturing facility.

"Tesla likes to see clean loads," he said.

Industrial machinery is not clean.

For example, neither a welding machine nor a brake press with a 22 kW starting current is a clean load. The motor is the same-the starting current may be five to seven times the operating current. Therefore, when designing client systems, Linked Group Services is looking for any large DOL (direct online) load.

The two most important things are to expand the system with these peaks in mind, and install a suitable transformer so that the Tesla battery sees a clean load.

Richard Chirgwin is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering a wide range of technical topics, including electronics, telecommunications, computing, and science.

1. Is the battery connected to the grid? Is it able/can it sell grid (stability) services to utility companies?

2. If redundancy and capacity are slightly increased, the generator is completely unnecessary.

Hi Greg, no, we are not connected to the grid at all. The problem is that network and connection costs far outweigh the benefits at this stage. It's not that if this situation changes, we won't be connected in the future.

Any "off-grid" system requires some form of backup to achieve redundancy and low input cycles. It is not economical to add additional batteries for this purpose at this stage and does not allow us to experience long periods of low solar input during the rainy season.

Amazing-Mackay is very "coal-oriented". The airport parking lot (or once) was full of mine carts from large inland coal mines. First in, first out workers! Too much sunlight will be wasted elsewhere in that city.

Please keep the SolarQuotes blog constructive and useful through the following 4 rules:

1. Preferred real name-you should be happy to add your name to your comment. 2. Put down the weapon. 3. Assume positive intentions. 4. If you are in the solar industry-try to understand the truth, not to sell. 5. Please keep the theme.

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