Wastewater treatment plants are usually very well suited to cover a high proportion of the electricity required with renewable energy from photovoltaic systems. These can be rooftop systems, ground-mounted systems or trackers. Many operators in Rhineland-Palatinate are structured in such a way that they operate many distributed and often small plants that are fed with wastewater by a large number of pumping stations. Some of these plants offer the opportunity to install a lot of PV power. For other plants, there is little space available. Pumping stations usually only have a small area and small roofs. If there are many pumping stations in the wastewater network, this can lead to a leveling of the overall load profile, a kind of background noise.
The generation plants are often built with subsidies. Surplus electricity that is fed into the distribution grid is then not remunerated, as this would mean double funding.
Energy Market Model
In order to be able to use the locally generated surplus electricity economically, balancing groups can be formed at the level of the municipal utilities. In this case, the electricity is consumed within the balancing group. Surpluses and deficits are balanced with the local distribution grid operator. A balancing group administrator is required to manage this balancing in accordance with the applicable regulations. This can be a municipal utility, for example, which offers this service.
Potential for Renewable Energies
BITControl also examines the potential for renewable energies in every modernization project. In doing so, it is important to look beyond the scope of the respective system and not just consider the consumption potential of this one system. The balancing group is an important way of exploiting an operator's renewable energy potential.
BITControl supports several municipal utilities and other wastewater treatment plant operators in determining the potential for renewable energies and setting up the balancing group.
Measurement Concept and Data Analysis
Data preparation is a key issue for us in every project. Here it is an advantage that we have mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and programmers in-house and can therefore work on all aspects of the data infrastructure, from the selection of hardware to the measurement concept and integration into the control system as a team.
Legal Issues
Legal and, in particular, state aid issues are a very complicated but also extremely important topic when setting up municipal generation plants and the balancing group. We therefore work together with Kunz Rechtsanwälten from Mainz on legal matters.
