RE-SAT backs Tonga’s effort to establish informative data for renewable energy

10th October, 2019 Tonga is one of the six Small Island Developing States (SIDS) that will benefit from a UK-based Institute for Environmental Analytics (IEA) programme called Renewable Energy Analytics Platform (RE-SAT). The programme aims to use earth observations and other sources of data to support SIDS in their journey towards renewable energy.

The CEO for MEIDECC Mr Paula Ma’u, today, opened the first RE-SAT workshop for representatives from relevant government ministries at the Department of Energy Conference Room.

The training seeks to introduce participants to RE-SAT and provide them with enough information to allow basic use of the platform, discussion of features useful to users, obtaining country-specific data and exploring the best way for exchanges and communication.

“This analytical platform training is to support our statistical analysis for renewable energy journey and targets. The RE-SAT platform is being developed in Tonga, to deliver data analytic platform capable of equipping SIDS with appropriate information, products and modelling tools to support our transition from fossil fuel electricity generation to renewable electricity generation,” said Mr Ma’u.

He also thanked the UK Space Agency and the IEA for their expertise, scientific advice, technical support, capacities and effective collaboration to facilitate the setup of the analysis platform in Tonga.

Representative from the IEA Mr Alan Yates said, “This is not a training in its finish product. We have a platform and some techniques that allows to create simulating high resolution weather data customized for Tonga, customized for the local conditions and seasons. We also have an application that allows planners responsible for renewable energy to do a high level scenario analysis, create a scenario of future energy generation. Both of these things, the data development and the application are working progress. We will be developing them as we work with you, so they will change.”