Release
At this year’s UK Solar Power Portal Awards, the PV installation of Marks & Spencer’s East Midland distribution centre in Castle Donington won the “Commercial-scale rooftop > 250 kW” category. The solar PV inverters and associated monitoring system were provided by the German photovoltaics specialist KACO new energy. The monitoring data shows impressive results.
It is not only the UK’s largest solar rooftop installation, but has now also taken the prize as the best commercial rooftop project over 250 kW in the Solar Power Portal Awards 2015: 24,272 PV modules are spread across the whole roof area of East Midland distribution centre of Marks & Spencer in Castle Donington, Leicestershire. The system uses over 90 KACO new energy solar PV inverters to provide the solar energy for self-consumption within the centre. The installation company, SBC Renewables received the award during a ceremony in Birmingham on October 13.
“A huge congratulations to our partner SBC,” said Andrew Walsh, Country Manager for UK and Ireland at KACO new energy. “They have done an impeccable and very creative job in getting the best possible result. We are both very happy and honoured to have been part of this project, which goes to show that commercial self-consumption is well worth it and that our inverters can not only help meet, but even surpass expectations.”
Among other things, the judges took into account the benefits delivered to the client and the impact on their business after connection. Since the solar energy is self-consumed on site, the installation has an influence on the distribution centre’s energy balance. KACO new energy also provided the PV system monitoring of the installation, which has been running since March 2015. The application for the award by SBC includes monitoring data that shows the plant consistently performing above predicted levels.
Not all of the roof segments could be covered with the same number of PV modules. This meant a careful system design matching string lengths to the inverters’ MPP trackers. This challenge was alleviated by the Powador 60.0 TL3 inverter. It features three MPP trackers of which each is able to be connected to four strings. The results are finely divided, homogeneous segments: The strings being combined together were not only of the same length but in the same orientation and, where possible, in the same row, with the same levels of irradiation and shading.