Infinite Energy has completed work on the solar component of the University of Western Australia's Future Farm Australia 2050 Project.
The Project's vision is “to imagine the
best-practice farm for 2050, and do it now.” Details of the project are available on the UWA website at http://www.animals.uwa.edu.au/research/future-farm
As part of the initiative, UWA has purchased a farm site at Pingelly 150km south east of Perth. The solar component involves providing the new state of the art Farm Manager's residence with a stand alone Solar PV system which will supply 100% of the home's electricity needs.
The Solar Project was delivered as a partnership between Infinite Energy, UWA's School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering, German Solar PV manufacturer Q-Cells and GreenSense.
As well as providing a 100% off-grid solar power solution to the farm manager's residence, the solar array will also form the basis of an on-going research project which will evaluate different Solar PV technologies in a real world environment.
About the Solar System
- The “off-grid” system is totally independent from the electricity grid (which is approximately 1km away) and will provide 100% of the energy requirements for the large modern farmhouse constructed at the site.
- The system’s energy is totally supplied by the solar pv system – no additional generators are used.
- The system has a 3 day redundancy meaning that electricity can be provided for 3 days if in theory the solar system did not produce any energy.
- The system features 2 x 5kw solar arrays (total 10kw) mounted on the ground together with a battery backup system.
- The system will be able to be remotely monitored via the internet in terms of energy produced and energy consumed via the GreenSense View platform.
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Components used:
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1 x 5kw Solar PV system utilising 22 x 235W
Q-Cells Q-Pro G2 (Poly-crystaline) modules with an SMA SunnyBoy 5000TL inverter.
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1 x 5kw
Solar PV system utilising 56 x 90W Q-Cells Q-Smart modules (Thin-Film) with an SMA SMC
5000A inverter.
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3 x SMA Sunny Island 5048
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Clenergy Solar Terrace 3 Mounting System
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24 x Hoppecke 8 OpzV Solar.Power 1000 batteries
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Greensense View Monitoring Platform.
