The Northern Sporades are an archipelago in the Aegean Sea along Greece's east coast, northeast of the island of Euboea. It consists of 24 islands, four permanently inhabited islands: Alonnisos, Skiathos, Skopelos, and Skyros. The islands Skiathos, Skopelos, and Alonnisos (forming the North Sporades archipelago) are interconnected, and Skiathos is also interconnected to the mainland.
A 150/20kV substation of Skiathos with 2x40/50 MVA rating capacity is connected to the mainland’s high voltage grid with 30km of 150kV underground and submarine cables. The three North Sporades islands are connected. Six medium voltage (MV) cables totalling 28.7 MW in capacity connect Skopelos to the mainland electrical grid through the nearby island of Skiathos. A total of two MV cables with a combined capacity of 12.2 MW connect Skopelos and Alonnisos. Archipelago still has an older MV interconnection with the mainland from Pelion to Skiathos Island.
There are problems with communication and stability on the islands. The energy cost has recently increased significantly for both people and municipalities. All of this has inspired the encouragement of the use of solar photovoltaic energy to supply disadvantaged homes and municipal loads with clean energy.
As part of the North Sporades Virtual Microgrid project, the Islands secretariat provided technical assistance with the following tasks:
Task 1: The system will need to include batteries to boost self-consumption and stability in the presence of uncertain PV productions and power disruptions. To complement the solar PV installation planned for the islands, this report solves a hybrid PV plus battery sizing optimization problem at the island level to maximize self-consumption and self-sufficiency while preserving grid capacity constraints.
Task 2: All the assets could be interconnected to work on a single platform in a unified blockchain market. As the first step, the Islands secretariat will first explain peer-to-peer networks, the future of peer-to-peer trading, and an outline of its difficulties as part of the North Sporades Virtual Community project. After that, a SOTA analysis and a conceptual design for a peer-to-peer energy market in the archipelago are discussed. The following fundamental capabilities will be looked at:
- Market functioning;
- Energy management system;
- Pricing mechanism; and
- Information system.
The technical assistance from the secretariat includes the following:
- Sizing of battery: Sizing of the battery to be installed to promote solar PV penetration.
- Peer-to-peer background: Background, future, and challenges of peer-to-peer trading
- Conceptual design and SOTA Analysis: Discussions on core functionalities mentioned above.
- Technical approach discussion: Overall assessment and detailed analysis of each technique
- Regulation overview: Requirements for the participants in peer-to-peer trading