Slovenia’s Idrija installing battery storage to become smart town

Idrija is becoming one of the first urban areas in Slovenia with electricity storage and a public infrastructure management system with flexible consumption. The small town is involved with the national NEDO project with Japanese partners.

The establishment of a battery storage system in a small hydropower power plant in Idrija is carried out by Kolektor Sisteh as part of a three-year smart grid project. New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), its authorized contractor Hitachi and ELES are the main partners.

The completion and commissioning of the equipment are scheduled for June, followed by a six-month trial run to make Idrija a smart town.

System prioritizes public health services in case of outage

During power outages, the health center, fire station, police premises, the psychiatric hospital, and retirement home will still be supplied with energy. The companies said the introduction of the micro-network would also increase the efficiency of power consumption.

The first phase of NEDO was implemented in Maribor and Celje

The Smart Grids and Smart Communities Demonstration Project, also called NEDO, is one of the largest Japanese investments in Slovenia, worth 35 million euros. It was first conducted in Maribor and Celje, the country’s second-and third-largest cities, respectively. Capital Ljubljana and Idrija are in the second phase.

Slovenian-Japanese demonstration project won international award

Energy storage is hybrid – a combination of lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries, with a maximum operating power of 1 MW and a capacity of 1.2 MWh. Kolektor Sisteh also adjusted the installations in the small hydroelectric facility.

National power transmission system operator ELES won the ISGAN Award of Excellence last year for the Slovenian-Japanese project for smart grids and smart communities. The endeavor will enable the electricity system and the community to test new functionalities in energy supply and management, implemented using environmentally friendly technologies.

NEDO includes cloud solutions and involves residential consumers. The integrated distribution management system (DMS) contributes to voltage control. The project is envisaged as a model for small- to medium-sized electric distribution firms.

According to an earlier estimate by ELES’s Chief Executive Officer Aleksander Mervar, Slovenia should by now have at least 40 MW in installed batteries with an overall storage capacity of 150 MWh, including those from the NEDO project.