The SDAWES project: an ambitious R&D prototype for wind-powered desalination

Preliminary experimental analysis of a small-scale prototype SWRO desalination plant, designed for continuous adjustment of its energy consumption to the widely varying power generated by a stand-alone wind turbine

“…Finally, given the results obtained to date and the experience acquired by the authors in previous projects of a related nature [30,[61][62][63]66], it is believed that the operating strategy outlined in this work could be incorporated in large-scale, wind energypowered desalination systems, as developed in the SDAWES project [61,63]. This could reduce the frequencies of connection and disconnection of the modules that make up the desalination system, enabling the plant to operate with higher permeate recovery rates, Fig.…”

“…A significant number of authors have underlined the benefits that can be obtained from water desalination through the use of hybrid energy sources (conventional-renewable) [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] and exclusively renewable sources [16,, with particular emphasis given to these latter sources being clean, cheap and inexhaustible. It should be noted that to date few projects have been developed for the exploitation of stand-alone renewable systems powering medium-and large-capacity desalination technologies [61][62][63][64][65]. Most of the studies undertaken have focussed on the application of photovoltaic solar energy and wind energy for small-scale water desalination (maximum capacity of 50 m 3 /day) in remote areas using RO (reverse osmosis) technology [40,42,48,59].…”

Renewable Energy Opportunities in Water Desalination

“…A 36-kW compressor was required. The experience was followed in 1995 by another larger plant at the island of Ru¨ gen. Additionally, a 50 m 3 /day wind MVC plant was installed in 1999 by the Instituto Tecnologico de Canarias (ITC) in Gran Canaria, Spain, within the Sea Desalination Autonomous Wind Energy System (SDAWES) project [47]. The wind farm is composed of two 230-kW wind turbines, a 1500-rpm flywheel coupled to a 100-kVA synchronous machine, an isolation transformer located in a specific building, and a 7.5-kW uninterruptible power supply located in the control dome.…”

The SDAWES project: lessons learnt from an innovative project

“…If the wind speed decreases, the control system will detect the reduction of frequency and will order a reduction in the consumption by disconnecting plants or modifying the working point until reaching the nominal frequency (52 Hz); if the wind is very weak, all the loads will be stopped. Carta et al described the process in detail [7,8].…”