After months of work: evaluating the farm’s grid power consumption, followed by design then build of the containerised battery based power system – the time finally arrived to demonstrate the resilience of the Puiul Dobrogean poultry farm’s 180kVA private power plant …by disconnecting the electricity grid whilst the power consumption was running at 141kW! Nothing happened. In a good way. The load was transferred to the battery-based energy installation without so much as a flicker!
The Romanian poultry farm consumes 1.5MWh of energy per day in the height of summer and had been relying on two back up generators to overcome grid failures; but when one of the generators failed to start – endangering livestock – it was clear that there was a vulnerability which could not be tolerated.
Ionel Dobre – the owner of Puiul Dobrogean farm – started his business in 2012 and has expanded it steadily. For him this realisation of energy insecurity brought with it an opportunity – to make a financial investment to drastically reduce energy costs at the same time as guaranteeing energy security. The new installation is projected to supply between 93% and 95% of the farm’s energy consumption.
Ovidiu Stan is the General Manager at Stoneage Energy – who are based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania – and wanted to implement a technical solution which could charge this huge battery bank efficiently, and through all seasons – not just the summer. Based on the results Stoneage Energy had experienced with their previous large installations, they decided to increase the battery charging capacity by adding 12 MPPT solar chargers to the 12 Quattro Inverter/Chargers – to provide a additional 1200 amps of charging capacity.
- Storage: Over 1.3 MWh in 48V LiFePO4 batteries (Low Voltage). Low voltage was chosen for safety and because it allowed the use of the most robust inverters available.
- Inverters: 12 x Quattro Inverter/Charger 15000VA – capable of delivering 180 kVA and managing load peaks – 15000 models can actually handle 25000W peaks.
- AC/DC Architecture: A hybrid ecosystem using 300 kW of Fronius Tauro 100 inverters (AC-coupled) for direct daytime consumption and 12 SmartSolar MPPT 250/100 solar charge chargers = 1200 Amps (DC-coupled) to efficiently and directly charge the battery bank.
- PV panels: Over 600 bifacial panels rated at 645W (510 pcs on the 3 Tauros + 96 pcs on the 12 MPPTs) offer a total of ≈ 400 kWp.
- Monitoring: Cerbo GX & VRM Portal.
- Safety via Loop: The hall’s electrical grid was designed in an underground loop. If a cable is accidentally severed (e.g., by an excavator), power is supplied via the other arm of the loop, ensuring 100% continuity.
- AI Automations with Node-RED:
Node-RED Temperature de-rating and shutdown code
The system features several innovations developed by Stoneage Energy engineers specifically for large projects like this one, including:
- A huge pre-charge & emergency shutdown system, controlled by in-house software for controlling and monitoring more than 100 parameters of the whole system.
- Rapid shutdown & pre-pre-charge: For complete system disconnection in the unlikely event of any fault.
- Dynamic Power Balancing: For large systems when solar production is low and/or the grid is weak or unstable.
- Battery protection mode: Maintains a useful power reserve for power outages or a low next day power harvest forecast, consumption, and grid energy costs.
Ionel says “Energy is monthly business cost. Once you install a system like this, that cost becomes an investment – this equipment is built to last 15-20 years.”
