solar power

good evening

i have been given the task of get solar power for my facility. Well I have a lot to learn. can anyone tell me a good website to use. Main power to my plant is 69,000 volts to pad mount transformer, 4160 to 8 substation, 480 volts out of substations. where would the solar power start.

thanks

jimcav said:

good evening

i have been given the task of get solar power for my facility. Well I have a lot to learn. can anyone tell me a good website to use. Main power to my plant is 69,000 volts to pad mount transformer, 4160 to 8 substation, 480 volts out of substations. where would the solar power start.

thanks

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This guy knows what he is doing. He started out with solar panels for his RV and then made so much money off of YouTube he bought a house which is now one big solar panel lab.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=will+prowse+solar

i know somethings and what to skip. For an industrial system skip by the 12 and 24 volt stuff immediately. Use 48 volts at a minimum. This allows you use thinner copper wires. Get a charge controller. MPPT system skip past PWM. Don't bother with lead acid batteries. They are cheaper but take too long to charge.

The charging could go through 5 phases. Learn what they do. Some controllers may have more phases. When using lead acid batteries thje absorbtion phase takes forever. and is only charging at a slow rate. LiFePO4 batteries chage much faster ang will handle many more charge cycles so LiFePO4 batter are worth the extra cost.

I have only scratched the basics and what to avoid so you can skip to the good stuff.

Since I have got my truck camper I have been very interested in solar power. I have bought a small system to play around with at my home. I am still playing with 12 volts systems now. I have a "green" computer that runs off of solar power and batteries only. I am at the "I am beginning to know what I don't know" phase but I am learning quickly.
If I were tasked to do something serious I was ask the local electric power company before doing anything. Some power companies allow you to sell back power to the grid. Some don't and will still charge you for being connected to the grid.

I checked for my company. Electric power is cheap here and the weather is not that good so the pay back was not that good. Also, it takes some space for the solar panels.

Wow thatÂ’s a broad request
I would ask them what is their budget for this project
I know the current trend it to go solar but look at it very carefully
What are their expatiations, how much of their plant needs are to be supplied from the solar panels
I just saw a news post where a huge solar furnace has just shut down, after over 10 years and over a billion dollars invested and they never made a single dollar.
Then consider this solar panels lose their efficiency over time and after about 10 years they will have to be replaced. They are high maintence from you power requirements I think you would need about a 1,000 acres or more for the solar panels , thatÂ’s a 1,000 acres of food producing farmland taken out of production. Then the future cost to dispose of the old expired solar panels.
Solar is just to make a few people very rich. Amazon has just shut down their solar panels in the US because of the number of fires caused by them. Is that what you really want to set you building on fire.
If you add it all up itÂ’s just another gimmick to make you feel good and take your money
Do the research for your self

I have to disagree with you Gary, there is definitely a place for large-scale solar within industry. Especially as energy storage systems become a reality. There is some very interesting stuff being done over the ditch in Australia, where they have lots of sun, and lots of land which is, to use a lovely aussie saying, "as dry as a dead dingo's donger". I'll let you figure that one out.

Where I do agree with you is, that a fair amount of research needs to go into the cost- benefit analysis of any such project. If you only get on average 6 hours a day of sun, then it's probably not a go'er.

For a facility that runs an 8-5 type operation, where consumption is highest during the day, they will have more impact. Even just peak-lopping to bring down your instantaneous kVA demand can have big financial benefits on your power bill.

To the OP - I suggest you start the basics, first.

Obtain the power bills from the company for the last 3 years. If available from the power company, obtain Time of Use metering data. Here for pretty much any facility over 100A we are on smart meters, so i can get half hourly kWhr and kVArhr to see when usage is.

See if you can get daily sunshine hour data from the local metrology office for your area.

Solar panel output is approx. 150-200W per m2 depending where you are in the world. Work out how much space you have for panels. Work out potential kWHr based on sunshine hours and panel space.

Now work out how much that equivalent kWhr would cost you per day.

Now you can get some indicative pricing from solar installers around your area and at least be able to do a basic payback period.

Don't forget that you need to be able to use this energy, so your switchboard will need to be able to be supplied with this power, normally in parallel with the utility supply. This is generally considered high risk work, and will need approving by the power company and verification by an inspector. There are costs in achieving all of this too.

Saffa said:

in Australia, where they have lots of sun, and lots of land which is, to use a lovely aussie saying, "as dry as a dead dingo's donger".

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I heard from a guy that worked in said solar farms and the "interesting" problem they had was cooling for the inverters since they're in the middle of a desert.

I looked at this problem for a company I was working on and the idea there was to tie the solar farm (company had a huge plot of land sitting empty and land that they did not want for any reason to ever be dug up) to the 11kV voltage mainly because we had a ring around the site and the generation would be, for the most part centralised in that plot. The other reason was that the 11kV ring was shared with another company on site that worked 24/7 (the place I did worked 24/5 only) which was useful to use the weekend generation (never got to work out the billing, but it would have been worked up in the split they did usually).

The only place we considered connecting to 415V network was the substation that fed the water distribution pumps (since these would work 24/7 because of the other company) and the unused plot that shall not be dug up was right next to it.

The estimate of generated power from that farm would have been (having discounted salesman figures myself) around 15 to 20% of my company's electrical energy use (I don't know how much the other company uses, but gut feeling is that it's much more). However, then (4-ish years ago) the price per kWh was a flat 9p. The company decided not to pursue the largest project in decades because, to be fair, they needed roughly that amount to actually stay in business by replacing their automation which was decrepit.

Not sure whether they regret not doing some of it (certainly the pump substation) with the current energy prices.

There are many different types of electricity producing solar panels, some do have a reduced lifespan, but the better quality ones will last 25 years, some even come with manufacturers guarantees of 25 Years.
There are many resources on the web to help you understand the potential for solar electric panels at your location. It depends on location, angle of solar cells, cloud level, and any shading. I am more familiar with those for the UK and Europe, but here are a few I found for the US. I have gone for government sites rather than sales sites:
https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html
https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-energy-united-states
https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/data-explorer/
As has been mentioned, currently solar electric cells have an efficiency of between 15% and 20%, which means 80% to 85% of the potential energy is not being collected. So, if your site has any need for heat (do you have a boiler on site) don't forget to consider solar thermal panels. I struggled to find government sites for this, but found some useful information.
https://www.eesi.org/files/solar_thermal_120111.pdf
You may think that solar electric and solar thermal would take up the same real estate, but people are now developing combined or hybrid solar electric and solar thermal systems. I only have info for UK sales sites, you will have to search for people in the US:
https://nakedenergy.com/products
Combined solar PV and solar thermal can get up to 80% efficiency at grabbing solar energy. With the advantage of keeping the PV cell cooler, which reduces the normal efficiency loss at higher temperature.

And finally . The next big hope in solar PV are perovskites, rather than being a specific chemical, it is a chemical structure that can be made from various chemicals. Solar PVs made using these structures are much simpler to make, can be printed on to plastic and need far less precious metals. Big pinch of salt here, but one of the scientists developing this say that by overlaying cells that capture different portions of the solar radiation, you get up to 40% efficient solar PV cells and he reckoned that it would be at about 1/15 of the cost of silicon based systems. The big problem they are working on is lifespan.


And finally and finally. Increasing energy efficiency of existing systems and structures is nowhere near as s e x y and solar energy, but it is usually the best place to start.

GaryS said:

thatÂ’s a 1,000 acres of food producing farmland taken out of production.

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OP is in NJ, so finding 1000ac in the first place is going to be the tough part .


Also, there is potential for synergy between solar panels and agriculture in a way that improves farmland production: if we leave gaps between panels (which increases the ac/kW, of course), then it reduces the water requirement of the crops, because some crops get too much sun, so the plants do the equivalent of sweating.

bryang said:

increasing energy efficiency of existing systems and structures is nowhere near as s e x y and solar energy, but it is usually the best place to start.

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+1

Very good point from BryanG. No point spending a few hundred grand on adding solar, only to be wasting 50% of it due to existing inefficiencies or losses.

I do work for a client that does an monthly review of power usage vs product treated (wastewater plant). Their aeration power is high. Each month I ask if they have fixed the aeration pipe leaks. They have not. This has been going on for a year. I'm a not a mechanical guy, but I'm pretty sure I could replace the leaking couplings in a day with a few grand of fittings and my ring spanner set.

BryanG said:

And finally and finally. Increasing energy efficiency of existing systems and structures is nowhere near as s e x y and solar energy, but it is usually the best place to start.

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+1 from me too.

Saffa said:

I do work for a client that does an monthly review of power usage vs product treated (wastewater plant). Their aeration power is high.

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27 years ago I worked for the market leader in compressor/blowers used in amongst other things wastewater aeration. The status as the market leader was due to that our compressor/blowers had an efficiency of near 80% whereas the competition was around 50%. Since these things are working 24/7 it was back then a quick payback of the investment, much more so today.

There was $1.5B solar farm failure in California.
Getting $1B back is not a good return on investment at this current time but CA needs the power. The alternative could be worse.
I don't see the failure but the benefit isn't that big considering.
https://youtu.be/HyuLp4Gv75s
Companies don't have that much land to waste.

Peter Nachtwey said:

Companies don't have that much land to waste.

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There's then local politics to deal with too in many places.

The best one is my neighbor... she actively fights against a farmer selling a plot of land across the road (like 600 meters from her house) to solar farm developers because "of all the buzzing"... her external jacuzzi is against the estate's voltage drop transformer. I don't see her complaining she can't use the jacuzzi, if anything she uses it too much... whilst drunk.

Sorry for the rant.

I am going to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I get very suspicious when I see anybody suggesting that sticking with fossil fuels is a possible let alone a good solution. This is a good documentary from the BBC. Spoiler alert, big business doesn't come out of it looking good:
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2022/big-oil-vs-the-world
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0cgql8f/big-oil-v-the-world

Even climate deniers can't fail to see what is happening to the weather across the world. You can't miss that the Antarctic is warming and the ice is melting and getting thinner, the sea level will rise.
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/worl...to-melting-of-greenland-ice-sheet/ar-AA11hhGm
You can't miss the temperature rise and fires in the US.
You can't miss the temperature rise and fires across Europe.
You can't miss the flooding in Pakistan and China and India.

Right now, we don't just need to stop producing CO2 we need to be extracting it from the atmosphere. It is a shame that Europe has been forced to have its focus elsewhere at the moment.

I don't think that big solutions will necessarily be the energy fix we need, I think it will be a lot of smaller things that do the job. These are not far from me:
https://torrshydro.org/
https://stockport-hydro.co.uk/
Though the lack of rain is hitting output.

Speaking selfishly, here is to a warm wet windy winter in Europe

@Bryang
#1 for the warm winter, will help the climate (less fossil fuels consumed) & hurt the pockets of those wealthy investors in energy production.

I would start by checking your available area for panels, and using this solar insolation calculator to see what the energy density is, then look that direction and be sure that you have no obstructions. Then you can get some idea of what the energy density will be and do a viability analysis on the subject. I guess it depends on if it's a "we are going to do this" thing or if it's a "we can save money doing this" thing. Generally, you need a lot of square footage to make a difference.



http://www.solarelectricityhandbook.com/solar-irradiance.html


There are two primary methods used. The first one uses direct solar energy to a set of inverters that step up power. The second charges batteries, and power from the batteries is injected.


It's probably best to have the setup paralleled to your service at some point. Just to be sure, I hope you aren't trying to take on such a large project on your own without knowing about it. I wouldn't even attempt such a large project on my own without being a part of a team.