Solar and batteries; life in the Mountains

Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Commercial
by
Veli Markovic

Introduction

Approximately 50 kilometers from Melbourne’s CBD in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges the environment is lovely, the air is clean but living up here does come at a price.

The electricity distribution system consists of poles and wires above the ground and this area is subject to a lot of blackouts and brownouts effectively from large trees or limbs falling on the wires.

The big storm

This became incredibly apparent in 2021 when a massive storm swept the area and a lot of houses were destroyed and some properties lost power for up to two months.

The customer and the system

The client is an animator and he works from home so the brief of this particular solar battery solution was energy at all costs. 

The system that Greenwood Solutions designed and installed consists of:

  • A PV  solar array of 6.66 kilowatts
  • That's 18 Canadian solar panels
  • Each one of those panels accommodates a Tigo optimizer 
  • Tying it all together is a five kilowatt hybrid inverter from sungrow 
  • With 12.8 kilowatt hours of energy storage

Analyzing all of this is the Sungrow monitoring system. 

How it works

With all solar systems the loads in the house are first serviced by the solar during daylight hours and if that's not enough the grid kicks in.

But this system is slightly different as there's something in between the solar contribution and the grid contribution and that is the energy storage component.

So loads in the house are first serviced by the solar if that's not enough then they're serviced by the batteries and if that's still not enough they're serviced by the grid. But in addition we've designed the system in such a way that a certain percentage of the energy storage is always there for backup because as I mentioned previously this area is notorious for brownouts and blackouts.

At the end of the day it’s all about finding out what the customers wants and needs, coming up with the right design and implementing.

If you’d like to see more of what Greenwood Solutions get up to in the real world of renewable energy, solar, battery storage and grid protection check out our industry and commercial pages:

https://www.greenwoodsolutions.com.au/industry 

https://www.greenwoodsolutions.com.au/commercial

https://www.greenwoodsolutions.com.au/news

https://www.greenwoodsolutions.com.au/commercial/customer-stories

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg_6LRcTUvdlwjnimkKxKxA

About the author

Veli Markovic

CEC Designer
Veli has nearly two decades of experience in the renewable industry. He is passionate about providing people with valuable education and is highly regarded throughout the industry as an educator and operator.
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