Onslow DER Project shortlisted for prestigious industry award

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Horizon Power’s Onslow Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Project has been shortlisted as a state finalist for the 2020 Australian Institute of Project Management Achievement Awards, in the category of Regional Projects.

The joint submission was prepared with professional services company GHD, for the delivery of centralised assets as part of stages 1 and 2 of the $80 million project.

Horizon Power’s Chief Executive Officer, Stephanie Unwin said Onslow DER is a great example of Horizon Power working with industry to bring together specialist skills and expertise to deliver truly great products and services to its customers.

“Horizon Power has been at the forefront, and in many cases world leading in developing and delivering leading edge energy solutions for our regional and remote customers,” Ms Unwin said.

“Through working with GHD on such a complex and uncharted project, Horizon Power is now in a position where Onslow DER is delivering a testing ground to prove technologies which will enable a high DER future by overcoming barriers to higher integration of renewable energy.”

The Project was delivered in two stages using Horizon Power’s Project Management Methodology. This provided a controlled and managed framework using a visible set of activities which were integrated into other frameworks.

GHD was engaged as the Engineering, Procurement and Construction Manager for the centralised assets delivered as part of stages 1 and 2 of the capital project. This included a new modular gas power station (nominal 8 MW of installed capacity), a 15-kilometre 33 kV transmission line, a zone substation, an extension to the 11 kV town distribution network, a 1 MW centralised solar farm and a 1 MW/1 MWh battery bank.

In addition to this backbone infrastructure, Horizon Power also delivered in excess of 2 MW of distributed solar, extensive customer battery systems and a world leading Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) to orchestrate the system as a whole.

The combined project team worked together to overcome a number of complex technical issues. This included mitigating the effects of a high level of intermittent rooftop solar generation, as well as reverse power flows. This was accomplished in tandem with the requirements of the central gas-generation power station.

The Project Management Achievement Awards recognise and promote outstanding achievements in program and project leadership, and provide an opportunity to showcase exceptional project success.

State and national winners will be announced in a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday 25 November.