SolGuard is a comprehensive solar PV system performance monitoring and management solution that is compatible with a wide range of components that are already widely available and used in systems throughout the world–brand name inverters, weather sensors, security systems, and more. The SolGuard software platform is a smart investment for both smaller, residential PV system owners, as well as commercial-scale solar power system operators who require a way to maximise the output of solar systems located at one or across multiple sites. SolGuard not only monitors system production; it also provides rapid diagnostics and troubleshooting assistance.

Conventional output monitoring units for solar PV systems

Solar PV system owners and operators wanting to ensure a good return on investment (ROI) should be keenly interested in the ongoing performance of their system. A wide array of monitoring systems and equipment are available on the solar market; sometimes these come standard or as options in system inverters, sometimes as separate units. Generally speaking, these monitoring devices are able to show overall system output, but are not able to explain why a system may not be meeting expectations. Whilst better than having no clue about system performance until the power bill comes (as would be the case with no monitoring system at all), the limitation of knowing that something is wrong without knowing why can potentially be frustrating when trying to troubleshoot issues with your solar PV system.

SolGuard: Policing the whole solar PV system

SolGuard Functionality Overview. (Click to englarge. Image via Amitec)

SolGuard offers a unique, holistic means of ensuring optimal solar PV system output and ROI over the system’s lifetime–generally 25+ years–without the installation of new hardware. Instead, SolGuard’s platform utilises, integrates and analyses the data from existing system hardware to give a bird’s eye view of system performance.

SolGuard software platform overview:

-No need to purchase additional hardware: Existing monitoring, security, and safety equipment can be used with the SolGuard software platform.

-SolGuard is a cost-effective, unified solution for monitoring, analysing performance, detecting faults and managing repairs, undertaking preventative maintenance, ensuring site security and safety, and even managing the plant construction schedule (for larger systems). It is the only software that combines all of these functions in one single platform.

-Access and control of SolGuard software is possible on computers at a designated central ‘control station’ or on ‘smart’ mobile devices.

-Smart monitoring and analysis for the whole PV systems, as well as inverters and strings. Additionally, SolGuard can also detect dust and shade, and faulty panels and strings, reducing the overall manpower and resources needed for system maintenance. Accurate data collection ensures rapid problem-solving capabilities.

-SolGuard can integrate security and safety monitoring equipment such as CCT cameras and electrical sensors for the early detection of potential issues, ensuring quick response time by alerting the relevant people (by SMS or email) about potential threats such as theft, vandalism, electrical faults, and fire.

SolGuard system architecture. (Click to enlarge. Image via Amitec)

Is SolGuard available in Australia?

SolGuard developer Amitec, an Israel-based IT company founded in 1996, is currently looking to form partnerships with Australian solar system installers and commercial-scale solar power project developers. As such, SolGuard is not yet commercially available here. If your company is interested in becoming a partner, please contact Amitec directly.

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd

An ambitious project showcasing the potential of solar PV has just come to a close. Pulling into Monaco on 4 May 2012, MS Turanor PlanetSolar catamaran has become the first vehicle to complete an around-the-world trip relying only on the power of the sun.

PlanetSolar arrives in Monaco. (Click to enlarge. Image via PlanetSolar.org.)

PlanetSolar’s historic journey, taking over a year and a half (584 days, to be exact), was obviously not an attempt to show demonstrate the potential speed of a solar-powered boat, but required nothing in the way of fuel. Instead, the vessel was designed with a cumulative total of 93.5 kilowatts (kW) of on-deck solar panels serving in the place of conventional propellant.

The trip, which began and ended in Monaco, led the 4-person crew across the Atlantic, between the Americas, to the east coast of Australia, through Southeast Asia, past the tip of India, and between Africa and the Middle East at the gulf of Iman.

To learn more about PlanetSolar’s voyage and vision, visit PlanetSolar.org.

PlanetSolar's journey. (Click to enlarge. Image via PlanetSolar.org).

All images via PlanetSolar.org

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd

A collaboration between Natcore Tech and the US Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has birthed the darkest silicon solar cells in the world. The cells absorb 99.7% of all light that occurs on its surface–only 0.3% of light is reflected. By comparison, most solar cells commercially available today absorb just 95% of incident irradiation.

The main advantage of the super-black cells is their ability to perform almost as well in cloudy conditions as in full sunlight. $150,000USD will be invested in the collaborative project, whose aims are to facilitate commercial uptake of the cells by reducing their price tag by 2-3% and to increase the daily solar output of a panel from 3-10% without using the use of solar tracking technology. Although peak efficiency of the cell, at 18.6%, is not record-setting, its amenability to inclement weather means that it will potentially produce more kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power per day than other cells with nominally higher peak efficiency.

“This technology will play an important role in moving forward the availability of solar technologies. It is one more step to help bolster the Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade,” said NREL Vice President for Commercialisation & Technology Transfer William Farris said in a press release.

Solar PV cells and modules are becoming increasingly more efficient and cheaper as time passes, due in part to the public and private support provided for research and development into innovations like the super-black silicon solar cells. It is incremental efficiency improvements such as those used here that have enabled polycrystalline silicon to become as efficient as monocrystalline at comparable cost. Once these technologies become mass-produced and widely available, price points come down and the overall affordability of solar PV comes increases. It is the mass production of solar PV technology that has played a major role in driving down prices to record low levels globally.

Top image via Natcore Technology

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd 

Clearly the global solar panel industry has grown at a rapid rate over the last few years with Germany leading the way. However, the next step of this rapidly evolving market is how to manage the surplus power that our solar panels are generating. It seems logical and sensible to consider that Electric Cars are the ideal solution to such a predicament.

Improvements in Electric Car Battery technology

In the past an Electric Car was considered something of a novelty and never a serious contender to fossil fueled vehicles. Today the idea of 1 in 5 electric cars being on the road come 2030 (an IHS Global prediction) is beliveable. According to Bloomberg there is currently an over supply of electric car batteries equivelant to 10GWh or 400,000 Electric Cars. This over supply is seeing the costs of these once hugely expensive batteries fall.

In addition; thanks to investment and growing competition the efficiences of these products is fast improving. Therefore, with the ever reducing costs of production, improving efficiencies/performance and growing competition. We are quickly making our way towards Electric Cars competing with traditional fossil fueled vehicles.

Solar Panels and Electric Vehicles; The Dream Team?

Many people who have installed solar panels know that often in the middle of the day when your yield as at its best you tend to generate more solar power than is required on site. Therefore, we need a way of effectively storing this power for use at another time.

The Electric Car is an ideal solution for this. Your home can be fitted with an electric car charging point which can then send any surplus power into your Electric Car’s battery. This should remove the odds of any oversupply from your solar panels, thus allowing you to make the most of your solar panels yield.

Electric Vehicles and Solar Power (Image Source: www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk)

Looking at the bigger picture, Australia has huge areas of car parks for instance that are essentially a neccesary but waste of space. However, if these carparks were fitted with a solar panel roof (making it a solar carport), an entire fleet of electric vehicles could be charged with both green and free electricty. This has to be the future when we consider the growth of the solar industry and the potential of Electric Vehicles.

Robert Llewellyn recently completed a video article on the potential of teaming up Solar Power with Electric Vehicles.

Written by Tom Charlesworth

This article originally appeared on the Solar Selections website

© 2012 Solar Selections Ltd/Solar Choice Pty Ltd

A new type of crystalline silicon solar cell has been developed which may change the nature of the solar PV market: quasi-mono silicon. The two most popular types for solar panels for residential and commercial solar installations are either monocrystalline or polycrystalline silicon solar panels. Once produced on a mass scale, this new technology will boast some of the best aspects of both mono and poly solar cells–including a polycrystalline silicon’s competitive price point and monocrystalline’s (generally) higher efficiency.

Although certainly not a blanket statement (as discussed previously), the average low-end monocrystalline solar panel will cost more than a polycrystalline solar panel of comparable quality. For this reason, plus the fact that a number of manufacturers have developed cost-effective ways to raise the efficiency level of polycrystalline cells, polycrystalline solar panels have begun to dominate the solar PV industry.

A number of solar cell and solar panel manufacturers have investigated the possibility of using the quasi-mono production process (in which the silicon ingot is cast as opposed to “grown“), but as of yet none of them have put it into commercial. Retrofitting existing silicon cell production equipment to manufacture the quasi-mono cells would be possible at a relatively low cost, and would allow manufacturers to produce the new technology at a cost close to that of polycrystalline cell production. According to Solar Novus Today, “With so many companies using similar ideas, it’s surprising that no major patent disputes have ensued and the technology has been allowed to proliferate.”

Nigel Mason, From UK-based PV Consulting, said, “With careful control of the vertical temperature gradient, the solidifying ingot will take up the crystal orientation of the seed wafer [cell]. This process not only gives an ingot that is largely monocrystalline, it also produces a square wafer, unlike the traditional mono process which typically gives a wafer with rounded corners resulting in reduced active area in the module.”

Although still not commercially available in most places, it may only be a matter of time before quasi-mono silicon makes it into the mainstream; the proposition is an attractive one. Roger Clark, of AGM IdealCast, a company with a patent for the production process, explains: “There are no industry-accepted standards, so cost comparison is difficult, but we estimate that, with a polysilicon feedstock price of $30/kg, our customers can achieve a savings of $0.45/wafer which equates to $0.11/W when compared with conventional mono wafers of a similar conversion efficiency.”

Source: Solar Novus Today

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd

A wind turbine with a rated capacity of 6.15 megawatts (MW)–the largest in the world–has been installed off the Belgian coast. Altogether, 48 wind turbines of this size and type will be installed to compose the Thornton Bank wind farm, and the same technology is already slated to be used in future wind farms off the coast of Germany.

Each rotor blade has a length of 63 metres, giving the turbine a total sweeping range 126 metres in diameter. A 40km undersea cable will connect the wind farm to the mainland electricity grid. Once complete, the total capacity of Thornton Bank will be 325MW, and supply enough electricity to power the equivalent of 200,000 homes per year.

The event has been hailed as a significant milestone for the wind power industry and the renewable energy industry in general. It is generally recognised that meeting the world’s energy needs using only renewable resources will only be possible through a strategic combination of energy efficiency, solar power, wind power, biomass, and geothermal power.

Solar Choice Commercial manages large-scale solar PV system for a wide range of clients throughout Australia, including solar farms for some of Australia’s most prominent wind farm companies.

Source: EVwind.es

Top image via Wikipedia

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd

Enecsys Micro Inverters are an innovative technology that offer a revolutionary approach to solar PV system design and installation. Instead of having a conventional, centralised solar inverter, Enecsys Micro Inverters are attached directly to the back of solar panels, thereby avoiding one of the most common issues in conventional solar arrays: efficiency loss in an entire ‘string’ of panels due to the shading of just one. Currently, Enecsys inverters are used in Australian-made Tindo Karra 240 solar panels.

Advantages of Enecsys Micro Inverters

Enecsys Micro Inverters: Problem & Solution. (Click to enlarge.)

Conventional Central Inverters

The inverter is arguably the most technologically important part of any solar PV system. The inverter’s role is to convert the DC electricity from solar panels into grid- and household appliance-compatible AC electricity. Most solar systems have only a centralised inverter to which panels are connected, which are susceptible to ‘bottlenecking’ in the production of electricity. This can occur when individual panels or separate strings of panels in the solar array are shaded, resulting in blockages in the flow of electricity.

Enecsys Micro Inverter Benefits

Enecsys’s technology avoids this issue by allowing each module to produce power on an individual basis, not influenced by neighbouring panels in the same string. This affords system owners and operators a number of benefits, including:

-Maximised electricity yields: Fewer power losses in panel strings and wiring

-Improved safety: Electrical faults in cells will not cause ‘backups’ that can result in fires through multiple panels

-Extended lifetime and increased reliability: The failure of one module will not bring system production to a complete halt, and Enecsys inverters have a service life of 25+ years to match that of the modules to which they are connected

-Enhanced performance monitoring: Inverters on each panel allows the system owner/operator to monitor the performance of individual panels and quickly identify and troubleshoot problems

-Simplified design and installation: Since each panel contains its own inverter, there is no need to be concerned with string layout, special wiring for the inverter, or mixed orientations–panels can be installed at all reasonable orientations, including just one lone panel on, for example, a west-facing roof.

-Widest ambient temperature range in the industry (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius): Outstanding performance even in extreme conditions

Download: Enecsys Micro Inverter Spec Sheet (pdf)

Enecsys inverters in Australia’s Tindo Karra 240 solar panels

Tindo’s Karra 240 solar panels debuted on the Australian market in January 2012, with much media hubbub surrounding the announcement. The panels are being assembled in Adelaide, SA using high-quality components from high-profile manufacturers across the globe, including Enecsys Micro Inverters. Tindo’s panels were recently selected for a ground-mounted installation in Adelaide.

Enecsys: Company background

Enecsys Limited was founded in 2003 in Cambridge, UK, where its headquarters are situated, after the patented technology was developed at Cambridge University. Enecsys develops, manufactures, and markets high-end micro inverters and monitoring systems for residential and commercial solar PV systems, and aims to stay on the global cutting edge of micro inverter technology with high-quality components at competitive prices.

In addition to the UK, the company has sales and support offices in Redwood Shores, California; Bad Homburg, Germany; and Taipei, Taiwan. Enecsys inverters are available in 15 countries worldwide, including Australia.

Enecsys homepage

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd

(All images via Enecsys)

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald analyses German’s plans to pipe solar power from the Sahara Desert across the Mediterranean, and into its electricity grid. The project, known as Desertec, is on the concept level simple, but on the technical, economic, and political levels, fraught with potential risks. Desertec is an interesting foil to the Australian Federal Government’s Solar Flagships project, which sets to support solar power plants of similar size, but within its own national borders.

The first 20MW instalment of what is to be a 150MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant is already under construction in a flat, desert section of Morocco. The Desertec project is essentially a pilot program to test the viability of large-scale solar power as a means to meet the energy needs of a future, fossil fuel-constrained world. Desertec is also an attempt by Germany–already the unquestioned world leader in installed solar PV, and well-recognised for its renewable energy targets and efforts–to test the waters to see if importing electricity in its raw form is a viable approach to securing its future energy security.

As a pilot project, Desertec bears certain similarities to the projects proposed under Australia’s own large-scale solar incentive scheme–Solar Flagships–which will eventually see through the development of up to 400MW of capacity between two plants–one CSP and one photovoltaic.

Despite the disparity in size, both the Desertec and Solar Flagships initiatives are looking to prove the technical practicality and economic viability of large-scale solar power plants, with hopes of leading the way to the broad-scale commercialisation of large-scale solar technologies. Both seek to take advantage of an abundant yet untapped energy resource. Both are heavily reliant on government subsidies to get off the ground.

One of the key differences between Australia and Germany’s large-scale solar ambitions with regard to these two projects is that Australia’s projects will be developed within the nation’s borders, making use of a national resource that is abundant and free. The power generated by the Flagship winners will be created and consumed domestically through an existing network. In contrast, in order for the power from Desertec to reach Germany, cables will have to be laid across the Moroccan desert and the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The power loss due to voltage drop will be significant, and relying on power piped in from a foreign country leaves Germany vulnerable to any political instability or post-colonial resentment that Morocco may undergo in the future.

The idea behind subsidising projects of this scale is to increase the certainty surrounding financing future projects of comparable size. The developers become ‘loss-leaders’, with government and non-governmental agencies copping the ‘loss’ in the interest of aiding the commercialisation of the technology. The Desertec project is a fascinating, almost sci-fi-esque endeavour that is being made into reality. It also puts Australia’s solar power potential into context–inspiring one to think that it is only a matter of time before Australia attains its (*ahem*) place in the sun as a solar world leader.

© 2012 Solar Choice Pty Ltd 

(Top image via SMH)

Australia’s Silex Systems has announced both that construction on its Mildura, Victoria concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) demonstration plant, and also that subsidiary SilexSolar will resume production of solar panels at its Sydney plant. The first stage of the demo plant’s construction will be completed by the end of 2012 with an installed capacity of 2 megawatts (MW). Subject to the favourable performance of this demonstration-scale version of the project, construction will expand to incorporate a full 100MW or greater by the end of 2016. With each unit generating 650W, the plant will be one of the most space-efficient solar power plants anywhere in the world, requiring only around 6 acres per MW.

100MW of concentrating solar PV in Mildura - Artist's Impression (Image via Solar Systems)

Mildura’s solar power: Solar PV plus CSP

Solar Systems parent company Silex Systems is well-known in Australia as a home-grown developer and manufacturer of solar energy technologies. Most notably, Silex Solar, another subsidiary of Silex Systems, operates a solar PV module manufacturing plant in Sydney’s Olympic Park. Such solar photovoltaic panels–rectangular modules that are mounted side-by-side on rooftops or on ground-mounted frames–are the form of solar power that most homeowners are acquainted with. Large-scale solar projects either utilise such panels or some form of concentrating solar power (CSP, also frequently referred to as ‘concentrating solar thermal’) technology, where sunlight is concentrated before its energy is harnessed. The Mildura plant will be the first of commercial, grid-connected project its kind to use Solar Systems’ technology.

Silex CS500-5 Concentrator (Image via Solar Systems)

Mirrors and solar concentrators

Silex Solar Systems’ technology could be described as a combination of these two types of technology, offering the best of both worlds: the scalability and modularity of solar PV with the CSP’s ability to magnify and concentrate the power of the sun using mirrors. The CS500-5 Dish System (pdf) units that will comprise the Mildura plant use mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays to 500 times the rate that ordinarily falls on the ground. The concentrated sunlight is focused into a concentrator and converted into electricity, a small box that sits opposite the mirrors, where their rays converge. Each module comes equipped with a dual-axis solar tracker, enabling them to efficiently harness the sun’s energy from sunrise to sunset throughout the year.

The solar photovoltaic cells used in the concentrator were originally developed to power satellites, and operate at about 40% efficiency–twice the level seen in the most efficient panels commercially available, and the highest in the world. Convertor boxes are actively cooled in order to prevent power losses from high temperatures, as well as to extend the life of the units. Convertors are designed with future upgrades in mind and be quickly and easily replaced as more advanced and efficient cells as they become available.

Financial aid from the Federal and Victorian governments

Solar Systems’ Mildura project has been made possible in part thanks to $120 million in funding–a grant of $75 million under the Federal government’s Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund (LETDF), and the balance from the Victoria government. Dispersal of funding will be contingent on the performance of the first 2MW of installed capacity, and the attainment of certain milestones in the life of the project.

SilexSolar Resumes solar PV panel production

In other news, Silex Systems’ SilexSolar has announced the resumption of PV panel manufacturing at its Sydney Olympic Park plant, after the plant ceased production last November. In an Inverview with RenewEconomy, Silex CEO Michael Goldsworthy said that SilexSolar would be recasting its rooftop solar PV strategy in the coming months.

Resources and links

Solar Systems Projects: Mildura 2011

Solar Choice Commercial manages the tender process for a wide diversity of large-scale solar power projects throughout Australia, including for solar communities, mining companies, restaurant groups, shopping centres, and rural solar farms. For professional management and consultancy on your solar energy project, contact our Commercial Tenders Manager, Iain McGregor, on 1300 78 72 73 for more information.