UK staff at renewable energy company RES have been working around the clock during the coronavirus lockdown to ensure the continuous supply of clean, green electricity for more than 6000,000 homes.
RES’ 24/7/365 control centre has booked more than 2000 key workers onto wind and solar sites over the previous month in order to react to faults and defects and bring wind turbines and solar arrays back online.
In one call out, the operations and maintenance team attended a site to rectify a blade pitching fault, bringing a turbine capable of generating enough electricity for 3000 households every hour back online in less than a day.
Elsewhere, following an external grid issue, which caused the solar farm to trip its high voltage supplies, an engineer was dispatched to re-energise the site within four hours.
RES’ teams are following government guidance on social distancing but have still been able to carry out major works.
This includes the replacement of gearboxes and transformers at some of the 520 turbines and 19 solar farms managed by the business.
The company has also used a mobile phone app to enable a technician in the UK to carry out a live inspection of a turbine located more than 1500km away in Sweden.
RES operations and maintenance director Simon Deacon said: “We’ve got a duty to keep the lights on for the nation at this critical time.
“To do this we’ve adapted quickly and found new ways of working which will stay with us long after lockdown.”
Deacon said, in response to news that coal-fired generation only accounted for 1% of electricity across the UK in April, that “renewable energy is no longer the future but the here and now”.
“Our industry can provide low cost electricity for consumers and we stand ready to deliver the energy needed to power the green economic recovery ahead,” he added.