Will small-scale PV contribute to french insular grid operation?

In the French overseas territories, PV production is no longer marginal and does play an important role in the balance of the system : in case of intermittency, the risk of blackout is a real issue as the insular electric systems are small and could not rely on interconnections. To prevent such a failure, the operator is allowed to disconnect part of the intermittent renewable production when the percentage of this production is reaching 30% of the total production. A monitoring system has been installed to control this limit. By 2020, renewable energies should provide 50% of the electrical insular needs. In addition to the development of non intermittent renewable energy sources (biomass, geothermal, hydro...), solutions should be found to integrate a higher percentage of intermittent energy sources: several innovative projects have been launched like Pegase and Millener projects. The purpose of this last pilot project is to contribute to: (1) the improvement of the integration of private household renewable energy sources within the system ; (2) the enhancement of the stability of power grids by real-time electricity supply and demand balancing; (3) the development of enduring economic mechanisms to achieve endogenous development and energy selfsufficiency whished locally. All these projects are aiming to transform the PV production (including the small one) into a real contributor to insular grid operation in a mid to long term perspective.