With the location for the panels fully marked out with string in terms of where the panels were to sit and all the cables from the panels to the garage and from the garage to the properties trenched and installed the time came for the installers to do their bit. The first job was to put the ‘flat roof’ buckets on the ground as per the marking out and weight them down with three bags of building sand in each.
Setting out the buckets (including bucket inspection cat).
Next up was the preparation and installation of the 42 photo-voltaic solar panels. To mount them to the buckets two backets are installed and across the width and these are screwed to the plastic buckets which combined with the sand mass in the buckets prevents them being blown about.
Installing the panels on the buckets.
There are 6 4mm armoured cables running back to the garage from the panels, one for each row, or ‘string’ as the industry term has it, of 7 panels. The garage then has 3 inverters mounted each one supporting 2 strings. The inverters take the DC power generated by the panels and convert it to 240V AC that is then fed back via 6mm armoured cable to the three properties (one for each inverter). Isolating switches are installed on each string, one on the end bucket (IP65 rated) and one just before the inverter input and another isolator is fitted to the inverter output. A generation meter is also installed on the output to show what each set of 14 panels (2 strings) is generating. The inverters were mounted on the wall and cable tray was used to secure and route the cables neatly.
Inverters being installed in the garage.
All this was done and completed in 2 days with the install being commissioned and certified at 18:30 on 31 March 2019, just 5.5 hours before the feed in tariff was abolished for new installs. Phew... as they say. While it was good to have the tariff sorted the install of the panels in the paddock looked a bit of a mess which was of course born out of necessity so the next job would be to dismount the panels and install them on a bespoke frame system.
Commentaires