Pacific SIDS Welcome a £2.9m Investment To Share Renewable Energy Expertise & Space Technology

The 9^th meeting of the Pacific Energy Advisory Group meeting welcomed the participation of Palau, Tonga and Vanuatu in an innovative renewable energy analytics platform, RE-SAT, that is to be developed by the UK-based Institute for Environmental Analytics.   .

RE-SAT  will be rolled out in six island states in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian oceans and is an  extension of the successful pilot of RE-SAT in the Seychelles, which has been made possible by £2.9m investment from the UK Space Agency International Partnership Programme (IPP). For the Pacific SIDS, the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Tonga-based Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency (PCREEE) has been instrumental in facilitating the participation of the Pacific.

“The PCREEE works to empower energy planners, utility engineers and the private sector with needed renewable energy resource data  for their planning and investment decisions and I am glad IEA will support us in this endeavour”, said Solomone Fifita, Manager of the PCREEE.

Colin McKinnon, CEO of the IEA, said: “By working closely with these island communities we will provide the quality of data they need to develop sound business cases to switch to renewable sources to a far greater extent. Understanding minute-by-minute variability is a key question as it affects the requirement for reserve energy generation. However, long periods of historic observations are often not available from existing data sources. With our world-leading skills in data analytics we will use Earth observation data to construct a synthetic weather model to improve both the planning of renewable investment and also the management of reserve capacity”.

RE-SAT fuses satellite and in-situ weather data with advanced analytics to provide highly detailed renewable energy information to help users:

• Explore and define the best renewable energy mix.
• Plan where to locate different renewable energy infrastructure.
• Assess the potential financial viability of renewable energy investments.
• Estimate power production and variability, taking into account seasonal weather patterns.

The IEA will work in partnership with the governments of the SIDS, their utilities companies, their energy regulators, PCREEE and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to tailor RE-SAT to the needs of each state and build the capacity of energy providers, policy-makers and planners to support its implementation, combining our expertise with in-country knowledge and skills.

The SIDS that are participating in the RE-SAT are Mauritius,  Montserrat, Palau, St Lucia, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Find out more about RE-SAT at https://www.re-sat.com/