The plant, named “Oriana”, is owned by solar power producer and investor Sonnedix and is the largest plant of its kind in the Caribbean. Oriana has started producing clean energy from September. It will cover the power demand of more than 12,000 homes and will displace 95,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

“All eyes are upon Oriana, as it is a milestone in driving the implementation of renewable energies in the Caribbean. To meet the requirements of the political and economic authorities, we decided to partner with skytron energy. They have a proven track record in mastering high-quality engineering services with an above average complexity. Most importantly, skytron energy has developed necessary solutions to collect 1-second values and to integrate external devices such as combiner boxes, battery charger, and power plant controller into one single supervision platform,” says Joern Hackbarth, EVP – Global Head of Engineering and Construction at Sonnedix. 

In the case of Oriana, skytron energy has re-engineered skyCOMM, which is a digital signal converter. It integrates external devices like inverters and irradiation as well as temperature sensors into the plant network in order to collect data in high resolution - in 1-second values via a single data concentrator, communicating in both directions. The company feels this will allow a quick reaction if the plant communicates any errors or failures.

“With its ambitious plans to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, the Caribbean has taken the right path to encourage the development of solar power generation. We are proud to support this direction and to partner with Sonnedix on completing the largest solar power plant in the region. Due to the size and the hybrid nature of the plant, we have deployed the entire range of our high-quality monitoring and supervision technology”, says Stephan Raulin, Head of Sales at skytron energy.

Oriana was connected to the grid in September 2016 and skytron claims that more than 100,000 MW-hours of clean, green electricity will be generated each year by the technology.