Achieving strict decarbonisation targets, while providing a safe, reliable, and affordable supply of energy on geographical islands is more complex than in mainland locations. Contrary to the mainland, where grid support and energy exchange with other regions are possible because of integration into large energy grids, the situation for geographical islands is different. Islands often have either no or limited connection to neighbouring ones or to the mainland resulting in a relatively costly energy supply and less opportunities for services such as balancing or backup to overcome the challenges that fluctuating renewables can cause. This can be tackled by development of highly flexible energy systems integrating various available renewable energy sources, multiple prime movers, and necessary energy storage and transportation infrastructure.
A currently ongoing ROBINSON project aims at contributing to decarbonise geographical islands by developing and installing a demonstrator of an integrated energy system on the island of Eigerøy in the southwest coast of Norway. As part of the ROBINSON project, this paper presents a brief overview of the project and its objectives, the baseline configuration of the integrated energy system and its energy fluxes that will be demonstrated on the island of Eigerøy in Norway. Even though the project is still in an early stage of implementation, this paper describes possible challenges and resulting requirements of different sub-systems including a gas turbine based combined heat and power unit within a highly integrated energy system.