Solar NZ

I've been working for Alphatron Pacific Ltd in Auckland since 13 July 2012 and have been involved with the following installations here:

10 Aug 2012: Small (500 Wp) off-grid solar backup system installed at a house near Tauranga. The owner just wanted to run his LED lights on it during the powercuts he regularly experiences there.

10 Oct 2012: 1.5 kWp grid-connected solar system installed at an architect's house in Auckland. REC Solar PV modules and SMA Sunny Boy inverter.

12 Feb 2013: 5 kWp grid-connected system installed on a farm shed in Tirau, including an SMA 5000TL inverter. This was the second 5 kWp system I had sold (I wasn't involved in the installation of the first one, in Albany Heights, Auckland).

13 Mar 2013: 2 kWp solar system installed on the roof of the Alphatron Pacific office in Auckland.

Initial installation was done in January, but due to a mis-communication the 2 rows of panels were put too close together and the mounting frame was not installed correctly. 

The installation was modified in March and the last photo shows the final result.

Bringing About Change!

This is a fantastic publication by SMA:
http://www.sma.de/fileadmin/content/global/Company/Documents/SMA_Imagebroschuere_EN_20120331.pdf

Very well done!

Off-grid Bangkok townhouse hybrid solar-wind system

Mark Hindelang has installed an urban aquaponics farm in his townhouse in Bangkok, and wanted to demonstrate he can also run it off-grid.

We installed a 2.2 kWp solar PV system and a 200 W Airbreeze windturbine on his roof to power the pumps that run the aquaponics system.

12 SolarWorld modules of 185 Wp were used, to be installed on a tiled roof.

The control board being assembled on-site. Morningstar TriStar charge controller, SunTechnics inverter, breakers and connectors.

Working on the steep roof was tricky and safety harnesses were essential.

  

The roof-axis was oriented North-South and it was decided to mount half the modules on the East-facing roof-slope and the other half on the West-facing roof-slope to allow for a balanced charging of the batteries throughout the day.

The small windturbine was installed on the highest point of the roof on a pole fixed to the facade.

The battery bank.

and the final control panel, mounted on the wall.

  

Solar pumping in Mae Sot

SolarWorld Singapore wanted to donate some old 50 Wp solar modules to an NGO in Thailand. We found BGET (Border Group Energy Team) interested in them to run a solar pump.

The water had to be pumped up some 40-50 meters from a shallow well to an area where they were planning to build a centre to educate Burmese refugee children in sustainable agricultural practices.

The site is at a small remote village near Mae Sot, on Thailand's western border with Myanmar.

The shallow well.

  

Work started first on the 1200 Wp array.

  

Then the HDPE pipe and array cable where laid into a trench, leading down to the shallow well.

The Grundfos SQFlex pump.

PVC cable conduit was used to protect the array cable.

The completed array. The pump started up immediately and supplied about 2000 liters of water per hour at 4 pm.

Solar Villa888 in Phuket, Thailand

On the 30th of Sept 2011 I drove down from Bangkok with a team of technicians from Annex Power to install a 20 kWp rooftop PV system on a luxury villa in Phuket, Thailand.
The owner wanted to make a statement and make the villa 'eco-neutral'.

We had designed a simple custom-made aluminium mounting structure to keep the profile as low as possible, in order keep visibility of the PV modules to a minimum.

The system is grid-connected through 2 SMA Tripower 3-phase inverters, each 12 kW.

Due to rain the installation took 2 days longer than expected, but after 8 days the system went online and started producing solar power.

On the very first day the system produced 100 kWh and made the kWh meter of the house run backwards!

Thailand MegaWatts

I worked from June 2011 until Feb 2012 on 3 different MegaWatt (MW) solar powerplants in Thailand for Annex Power Ltd.

Due to severe flooding, the work on 2 of these plants (Sai Yoi - 3 MW and Sai Prapa - 7.25 MW) was severely delayed for many months. The 3rd powerplant, Indorama, which had been commissioned in July 2011 was completely inundated by floodwaters 6 weeks after commissioning and a virtual write-of.

This is the 2.37 MW Indorama solar plant, commissioned in July 2011, before it got flooded.

Piling at Sai Yoi (3 MW) started in late August 2011.

Since it was the rainy season, the soil was already pretty boggy and made operations difficult.

Teams started mounting the PV module support structures by mid-September 2011 at Sai Yoi.

  

and the first Conergy 225 Wp modules were mounted a week later.

Meanwhile, the flooding situation got worse and both Sai Yoi and Sai Prapa were under serious risk of inundation.

This is the waterlevel just outside the perimeter wall around Sai Yoi.

The only way to reach Sai Yoi and Sai Prapa was by boat. We constructed a raft to bring in solar modules to the site to keep the work going.

Indorama solar plant at Lopburi got completely inundated under 2 meters of floodwater and the solar modules completely disappeared under water. This pictures was taken on Nov 1st, when the panels slowly stared emerging from the water again.

The floodwaters left a thick later of mud on the PV modules.

  

Sai Yoi and Sai Prapa were eventually completed by April 2012, some 6 months behind schedule.