Dr Jenni Rekola, Tampere University of Technology, visited Cuba for 4 weeks in May for different training, seminar, and meeting purposes.
In Moa, the focus was on power electronic converters in general, properties of solar power panel and wind, control algorithms, simulation and calculation programs (including Matlab). Discussions also touched upon stability of the power system and how it will change when renewable power production will be connected to the grid. These issues are very important in Cuba because the power quality and grid strength are not good in rural areas. In Moa the grid is more stable since the power consumed in nickel factories is produced by their own fuel generators. In the simulation model of the DC/DC boost converter was created by using Matlab Simulink simulation program. Majority of the students had used Matlab already. The use of simulation program is crucial to be able to analyze the transient conditions as well as un-idealities of the components in the power converter.
Prof. Olav Hohmeyer from Flensburg talked about 100 % renewable energy system and necessity to mitigate climate change and adverse environmental and social impacts. He emphasised that power generation and consumption need to be always in balance and therefore in addition to build up renewable power generation, also energy storages, especially hydropower pumps needs to be installed. He explained how the energy production, storage and consumption can be modeled by using Excel. Moa trainings were finalised as Jenni Rekola talked about inverters and practical desing of solar power plants.
In Santiago de Cuba, Jyrki Luukkanen from FFRC also joined the team. Unfortunately the conference in Universidad de Oriente was cancelled in the last minute, but trainigs took place and focused on similar issues as in Moa. Jyrki presented the LINDA model and work was done to develop a country-wide model for Cuba.
The team also visited CIES (Centro de Investigaciones de Energia Solar), UNE (Union Electrica), and an annual workshop by Cubasolar in Las Tunas. A full summary is available here.
Written by Jenni Rekola, Tampere University of Technology