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One of the main reasons for installing solar for businesses is an economic return. When we propose solar to companies we are aware that it has to be a solid economic proposition – it has to provide a good return on investment, and it needs to compete with other projects that require capital.
So, we will include monitoring in our proposals to you for commercial solar (for residential it is an option).
One of the drawbacks of solar power is that you are buying an asset that you can’t SEE working. Because you still remain connected to the grid,and your power continues to flow in from the grid as you need it, then if your solar stopped working, your power would not stop.
You could wait until your power bills came in, and try and decipher if your consumption was more or less than previous.
Or you could look at your inverter and see how much it displayed it was producing at any time of day.
Or you could get a monitoring system.
Monitoring often costs from $1500-5000 and gives you real time information on what your system is producing. The systems will also store data for historical comparison.
The main reasons for wanting monitoring are:
- Check that the system is doing what it should
- Compare output v warranteed output
- Share data with other stakeholders about the success of the system – for example: the public, customers, shareholders, staff etc.
There’s many providors of monitoring systems, and there are a few things to consider:
- Is it made by the inverter manufacturers, or a 3rd party add on?
- Does it have a proven track record?
- What is the access to the information – web based? Secure or public?
- How can the information be displayed?
- What is the measurement method? (can be from actual electricity flow, or from internal inverter measurements).
In commercial solar, we often specify SMA inverters because of their technical excellence and build quality (German stuff, say no more…)
SMA have their own monitoring solutions which work very well with their equipment and are a moderate cost (from $1500 including setup) – this includes an add on card in the inverter, wiring to a Sunny Webbox, and then either hard-wiring or bluetooth connnection to a company’s router. From there, the performance can be set as public or password accessed. For a greater investment you can add on separate monitors and ‘dashboard’ views using their free software called FlashView.
See this for some examples of SMA Monitoring systems.
Check this out for a real-time example of data from Baxter Healthcare using SMA inverters.
Click here for some more examples of data from commercial solar systems and a discussion about systems that also display power use (‘black data’) as well as solar power production.
For a discussion on how solar can help your business – and the free financial modelling that we provide – please call Stuart Gordon on 1300 792 011.
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