In very remote South Australian townships, electricity supply has long depended on diesel generation, resulting in high fuel costs, delivery challenges, and increasing maintenance pressures.
SAGE Automation collaborated with project partners to develop the electrical and control infrastructure for the new remote power station. The project centred on delivering a new power station with high levels of renewable energy penetration supported by a battery energy storage system.
The overall project aims were clear:
The remote location, unsealed roads and extreme temperatures meant it was essential that equipment, control systems and designs were durable and maintainable over the long term.
This required careful coordination of new solar generation, battery systems and diesel generation, all operating within a robust control and protection framework.
By leveraging SAGE’s knowledge with existing remote power stations in SA and NT the team applied standardised designs and templates that provided efficiencies and scalability across very remote energy assets. This approach ensured the program’s strategic objectives were translated into a quality, schedule and long term ‑ maintainability solution for the customer.
Looking forward, the upgraded power station and integrated control architecture will support more efficient operations of generation assets, reduce diesel generator maintenance requirements, and provide improved visibility of site performance.
SAGE Automation delivered the full design and manufacture of the main switchboard responsible for the site power management, including feeders and interfaces to all generation equipment. A dedicated remote switching panel was supplied to enable both local and remote operation of critical circuit breakers.
SAGE also supplied an auxiliary generator connection panel and a weather station for the site. Remote terminal unit programming was delivered, including development of the interface to distributed energy resources and the microgrid controller. A single line diagram mimic for supervisory control and data acquisition was produced using standardised pop‑ups and faceplates, and the site was integrated into existing remote reporting.
During commissioning, SAGE provided engineering resources to support control and monitoring of the switchboards and fuel system on site. A remote supervisory control and data acquisition engineering resource also supported testing of devices back to the cloud‑hosted and central powerhouse supervisory systems, ensuring that data flows and control functionality aligned with the project requirements.
SAGE has extensive experience operating in very remote sites, for the project delivery SAGE worked with stakeholders to ensure the project was delivered on schedule, to quality and compliance standards.