Hybrid microgrid control for a beachfront resort in Nicaragua
30 Oct 2026
5 min read
Project overview
Rancho Santana is a luxury beachfront resort development in Tola, in Nicaragua's Rivas department. Pelican, S.A., the project's EPC contractor and developer, engaged ComAp to supply the control system for a new on-grid hybrid microgrid combining photovoltaics (PV), battery energy storage (BESS), and diesel backup generation. All of the site’s energy assets are integrated into a single system managed by ComAp’s control solution.
Key objectives:
Reduce utility peak-demand charges through battery-based energy arbitrage
Cut diesel dependence by reserving the gen-sets for backup duty only
Maintain supply through grid outages with seamless transitions to island operation
Bring solar PV, battery storage, gen-sets, and the utility interconnection under a single supervisory control and protection layer
The challenge
Rancho Santana needed to lower its peak-tariff grid costs and its reliance on diesel generation while improving resilience against grid outages. Meeting all three aims at once meant coordinating four energy sources that had never been integrated on this site: SMA solar inverters, a Huawei battery energy storage system capable of grid-forming operation, two diesel gen-sets, and the utility grid, connected through a utility-side recloser. Each energy source came from a different vendor, with its own protection requirements and operating limits.
The solution
ComAp engineered the sequence of operation for the microgrid and delivered commissioning across two site visits. An advanced ComAp hybrid control panel, built around an InteliNeo 6000 microgrid controller, supervises approximately 1,125 kWp of SMA solar PV, a 1.2 MW / 4.5 MWh Huawei Luna2000 battery system, and two diesel gen-sets of approximately 424 kW and 350 kW. Initial functional testing identified protection-coordination and control-sequencing issues in the loss-of-mains and battery island-start logic. The sequence of operation was revised and a dedicated InteliMains 1010 grid-interconnection controller was added, giving the microgrid coordinated, protected command over the utility-side recloser and improving synchronisation between the grid, battery, solar, and gen-sets. ComAp also worked directly with the battery manufacturer to secure formal approval for continuous grid-forming operation in parallel with the gen-sets.
The result
Before handover, ComAp engineers tested the system on site against the resort’s real load. The tests confirmed seamless transitions between grid-connected and island operation in every configuration: battery only, battery and solar, battery, solar, and gen-sets together, and a mode that makes the most of the available solar power. The battery now charges when electricity is cheapest and supplies the resort through the utility’s evening peak. This cuts both peak-rate grid imports and diesel use, and the gen-sets now serve only as backup.
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