Kanowna Solar Farm Connected to the MV Grid with a NOJA Power GMK

Switchgear Engineering Firm NOJA Power is celebrating the connection of the Kanowna Solar Farm using their Ground Mount Kiosk Recloser Product.

In the Kanowna Solar Project, 9MW of solar photovoltaic generation is connected through a NOJA Power GMK, providing the primary circuit breaker, metering and grid islanding protection compliance requirements from a single integrated switchgear assembly tailored in collaboration with Brisbane engineering consultancy EnergyDesigners.

With upfront capital cost minimisation as a core strategic directive for the project, NOJA Power’s GMK product provides all Medium Voltage (MV) network connection compliance requirements including Rate of Change of Frequency (ROCOF) Protection and Power Quality Metering in a single assembly tested at the factory. The full assembly is end-to-end tested at the manufacturer, ensuring a minimisation of on-site commissioning costs.

“The NOJA Power GMK is a single packaged solution provides protection, isolation, earthing, metering and most importantly connectivity to the medium voltage network,” reports NOJA Power Group Managing Director Neil O’Sullivan. “It makes these smaller scale projects viable with installation possible anywhere there is a medium voltage line available, rather than a limited distance from a zone substation which has been the case in the past - making projects like this viable anywhere in the world.”

The Kanowna Solar farm connection joins a long list of medium scale distributed generation projects for which NOJA Power have provided the point of connection switchgear.

NOJA Power’s commitment to developing environmentally friendly switchgear supports the mission of renewable energy generators, as the firm are specialists in switchgear design that uses Solid Dielectric insulation in lieu of traditional SF6 insulating gas.

Considering that SF6 gas has over 23,000 times the greenhouse effect of a single kg of CO2, NOJA Power’s innovation in designing switchgear without SF6 allows renewable generation sites to decarbonise their connection and ensure the mitigation benefits of the generation source are not offset by unsustainable switchgear.