IBC SOLAR installs PV hybrid system at the Aldabra Atoll UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Seychelles Islands.
SOLAR AG has installed a PV hybrid system with a capacity of 25.38 kilowatt peak (kWp) at Aldabra Atoll (Seychelles). The system has been ensuring the power supply for the local research station for a year now. Aldabra, the largest atoll in the Indian Ocean, is a refuge for many threatened species, both flora and fauna. The atoll belongs to the Seychelles Islands and was designated a natural UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.
The Seychelles Island Foundation (SIF) is dedicated to researching and preserving the atoll and therefore runs a research station on Aldabra which is directed by Dr. Frauke Fleischer-Dogley (CEO). Together with the SIF, IBC SOLAR started planning a sustainable energy solution in April 2010 that was intended to supply the research station with electricity. Since its founding in the 1970s, the research station was operated solely on diesel generators. Keeping the atoll supplied with fuel was a major logistical and financial challenge and a constant threat to the fragile ecosystem. “The old diesel generator system was replaced by an intelligent system design with one smaller diesel generator and the newly installed solar system which are now used together as a hybrid solution. This offers the great advantage that the researchers now are provided with around the clock electricity while consuming far less diesel,” explains Alexander Müller, Team Manager Hybrid Power Supply at IBC SOLAR and head of the project. The extended payback time of the overall project costs is eight years. The PV hybrid system alone would amount to a payback time of only three years.
