The State University of Campinas in Brazil, commonly known as Unicamp, recently inaugurated an autonomous energy microgrid that will save the university roughly $75,000 (R$450,000) in annual energy costs, according to the developers.

Unicamp, one of Brazil’s preeminent public research universities, is located about 65 miles north of São Paulo.

Dubbed CampusGrid, the microgrid includes a 565 kW photovoltaic (PV) system, a 1 MW/1.27 MWh high capacity battery energy storage system (BESS) and a 250 kilovolt-amperes (kVa) natural gas backup generator.

The PV system includes rooftop solar panels on several campus buildings, a solar kiosk and a charging station for the university’s electric shuttle buses. Control equipment for the microgrid is housed in the same parking lot as the shuttle bus charger.

In case of a grid outage or blackout, the system will provide up to 2 hours of emergency power to two libraries, a multipurpose gym and the School of Physical Education on the public research university’s Barão Geraldo campus.

“This pilot project is important for us to face challenges and to train professionals who can contribute to the microgrid market in Latin America,” professor Luiz Carlos Pereira da Silva, coordinator of the Microgrid Project and the Sustainable Campus Office at Unicamp, said at the inauguration event. “No university in Latin America has a structure like this.”

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