Germany: SPIE connects Rimlingen solar farm to medium-voltage grid and helps to cut carbon emissions

Losheim am See, 02 July 2024 – SPIE, the independent European leader in multi-technical services in the areas of energy and communications, has assumed responsibility for connecting the Rimlingen solar farm to the medium-voltage grid for Greencells Regio (now SOLOS GmbH), thereby helping to prevent the emission of more than 1,200 tonnes of carbon emissions since August 2023⁽¹⁾. The solar farm, operated by BürgerSolar Gesellschaft Saar mbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bürgerenergiegenossenschaft Hochwald eG, consists of approximately 8,500 solar modules and is expected to produce more than four million kilowatt hours of electricity per calendar year, which corresponds to the consumption of around 1,300 households.

Working together to provide a turnkey solution

SPIE Deutschland & Zentraleuropa provided support during the commissioning of the photovoltaic power plant, enabling the client to offer the entire project as a turnkey solution. Greencells Regio first planned and installed the solar farm right through to the inverters. Ökostrom Saar GmbH was in charge of project management and is responsible for the technical management of the solar farm.

SPIE Buchmann from the Building Technology & Automation operational division designed and implemented the turnkey grid connection to the public 20kV (kilovolt) medium-voltage grid. “Integrating a generation plant of this size as a comprehensive solution presented us with a number of technical and logistical challenges, which we successfully overcame thanks to our many years of expertise in the field of energy infrastructure and our well-coordinated, solution-oriented team,” says Oliver Thurnes, project manager and Managing Director of SPIE Buchmann.

Digital solution for sustainability

The direct current generated by the solar farm has to be converted into alternating current to be fed into the public grid. The team led by Christian Krein, site manager at SPIE Buchmann, laid around six kilometres of medium-voltage cable and one and a half kilometres of fibre optic cable in a cable route prepared in advance. The specialists from SPIE also installed a transformer station and a transfer station weighing almost 25 tonnes as well as two telecontrol systems. They have connected these to the grid control centre for online monitoring and control of the transformer stations and the generation plant. “With this digitalisation, the plant has become a smart local grid station that can stabilise and regulate the voltage in the medium-voltage grid and also simplify fault location – a key step towards avoiding outages and increasing efficiency,” explains Christian Krein.

The multi-technical service provider successfully completed the tightly scheduled, technically demanding project last summer in close cooperation with the customer. Since then, the solar farm has already produced close to three million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity. “As we strive to achieve ambitious sustainability goals at SPIE, we are all the more delighted that we were able to support our client with our expertise in the medium-voltage energy systems segment and at the same time contribute to a considerable reduction in carbon emissions,” says Jörn Ettenhofer, General Manager of the Building Technology & Automation operational division.

_{(1)  Calculation based on the assumed reduction in carbon emissions over the full lifetime of the solar farm.}