Business project, West Coast
A phased system for an engineering premises
An industrial site brought onto solar in stages, with the DC infrastructure sized at the start for the array that arrived later.
- Site
- Business
- Town
- West Coast
- Completed
- 2023
The situation
Industrial premises tend to have a strong daytime load profile, which is the best possible case for solar generation. Most of what is produced is consumed on site as it is made.
The constraint is usually capital rather than technical fit, which makes a staged approach the practical one.
What it had to do
- Reduce daytime grid consumption against a strong daytime load
- Stage the investment across two phases
- Install DC infrastructure in phase one capable of carrying the phase two array
- Keep the plant area orderly and serviceable
How it was built
Phase one, capacity and headroom
Inverter capacity, charge control and a Lynx-based DC distribution arrangement were installed together with the first array. The combiner and distribution were specified for the eventual array rather than the initial one, which is the decision that made phase two economic.
Phase two, the array grows
The second phase added modules onto the existing infrastructure. No inverter change, no rework of the DC distribution, no second set of cable routes through the building.
An orderly plant area
Everything is mounted on one plane, labelled and reachable. On an industrial site where maintenance staff and contractors come and go, a board that explains itself is worth the time it takes to do properly.
Result
Daytime generation offsets a load profile that is already concentrated in daylight hours, which is where solar returns the most per rand installed.
Phase two cost what the modules cost, because the infrastructure to carry them was already there.
On site
Charge control and PV distribution 
DC distribution, sized for the final array 
PV combiner, open 
The phase two array
Next step
Start with an assessment.
Tell us how the property is used and what you want it to do. We come out, work through the site and put the reasoning in writing.