One remarkable case is San Vicente del Monte, a small town in Cantabria with just 200 residents, which made national headlines for remaining powered while much of the Iberian Peninsula experienced outages. The reason? An advanced battery storage solution developed by ZGR Corporation, recently featured in PV Magazine.
The installation in San Vicente del Monte consists of a stand-alone system rated at 160 kW / 250 kWh, connected to the low-voltage grid. It successfully powered the town for over five hours during the blackout. This containerised solution, equipped with ZGR’s PCS bidirectional inverters and LiFePO4 batteries, reinforces the local energy infrastructure, ensuring reliable service even when the central grid fails.
ZGR’s bidirectional inverters operate dynamically, supplying, charging, or discharging as the system demands. During the blackout, the islanded system autonomously formed a “grid-forming network”, maintaining electricity supply to end users via stored energy.
PV Magazine Endorses ZGR’s Solution as Ideal for Rural End-of-Line Locations
In an interview with PV Magazine, José Antonio Grande, Business Development Director at ZGR Corporation, emphasized: “Spain’s distribution grid is generally excellent, stable, robust, and reliable. The only areas that display sensitivity are those rural regions at the end of the line. That’s precisely why we’ve developed modular solutions that can deliver high service quality and continuous supply, even in critical scenarios like the blackout we experienced last April.”
Grande further added: “These projects can be deployed anywhere across the network where vulnerabilities are present. Although Spain currently lacks a capacity market to support widespread deployment, this technology will gradually be implemented in a uniform manner to enhance grid resilience.”
Want to know all the details? We encourage you to read the full story in PV Magazine.
