Pumping ground water into a holding tank on the surface (or pumping surface water into an elevated storage tank) is an ideal application for renewable energy, because pumped water is inherently an energy storage medium. Water can be pumped whenever sufficient renewable energy is available and at a variable rate, allowing the load to be matched to the variable renewable power output, minimizing the need for electrical storage or backup power sources. Furthermore, water pumping can serve as an anchor application to a community microgrid that might otherwise be uneconomic.

Building on the success of its wind-powered water pumping project in Hawaii, Sustainable Power Systems has partnered with XANT to develop a pre-packaged off-grid wind-powered water pumping system optimized for deployment in remote locations. In addition to the main water pumping load, the system may be configured to serve a small microgrid to serve small commercial or household loads in a nearby community. The presentation will include sizing guidelines and techniques to estimate system performance in a given pumping application.

Steve Drouilhet
CEO
Sustainable Power Systems, Inc

Steve Drouilhet is Founder and CEO of Sustainable Power Systems, Inc., a microgrid controls technology developer in Boulder, Colorado. Steve is a creative and innovative systems designer, well versed in electrical, mechanical, and controls engineering disciplines, and he holds engineering degrees from Brown University, the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, and the University of California at Berkeley. Steve's professional experience in renewable energy industry spans 35 years, having begun his career in 1982 working as a field test engineer on the first California wind farm. From 1994 to 2002, he worked at the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where he led NREL's program in wind-diesel hybrid system research and development. Sustainable Power Systems has implemented grid-tied, island, and village microgrid systems in Alaska, California, Colorado, Kansas, Hawaii, and China.



Alex DeBroe
CEO
XANT, n.v., Belgium