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.