The Northern Territory is blessed with abundant sunshine, which places it in a unique position to harness solar energy.
Beneath the blazing sun of central Australia, a ‘forest’ of solar panels stands against the horizon. This other-worldly sight is actually one of great scientific and environmental value – it marks the beginning of a project that has become one of the most comprehensive longitudinal photovoltaic (PV) performance datasets in the world.
As many of you will know, solar energy is popular in the Northern Territory and it is used in a variety of niche applications, including domestic hot water and telecommunications.
These panels are part of the Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre (DKASC), which is located about 9km south of Alice Springs. It is a demonstration site for solar panels, which helps to promote understanding and confidence in solar technologies to the broader population.
The site is an initiative of national organisation Desert Knowledge Australia and professional engineering service provider CAT Projects. It is funded by the Federal Government and administered by the Northern Territory Government, and also won the 2009 Northern Division Engineering Excellence Award for Design and Innovation.
Operating since 2008, the centre currently accommodates 33 solar panel installations and a custom-made weather station, which are all monitored by Schneider Electric PowerLogic ION meters and Enterprise software. The technology was installed by AZZO Automation, Schneider Electric’s energy solutions integrator in South Australia and Northern Territory.
“The client required a monitoring and reporting system which was expandable and would accurately and reliably measure the performance characteristics of each solar installation,” AZZO Automation business development manager James DiLiberto says.
“The integrity of the data was paramount. The upper range of PowerLogic ION meters can monitor and log downstream devices, record analogue and digital inputs, as well as send alerts on exception, so the meters were the obvious choice to provide a single data concentration with local display for all conditioned device inputs.”
The ION meters monitor the solar panel outputs at one second intervals, averaging that output over a five minute period and then transmitting the data to the displays and the database.
To provide backup in the event of a data transmission fault, the master PowerLogic ION meter has been configured to store up to one complete week of the entire data set in its memory. To complement these technologies, AZZO Automation customised an advanced data logger to control the collected information.
In order to meet the project’s objectives of making solar technologies more accessible, CAT Projects required the collected data to be uploaded in real time to a website, where members of the general public can access it. The flash-based website displays the information from each of the solar array installation as uploaded from the meters, as well as details of the current weather conditions, as uploaded from the weather station sensors.
The weather station was custom-built by AZZO Automation to record direct and indirect sun monitoring, wind speed and direction, humidity and temperature. Both sets of data are presented on the website in an easy-to-understand format. The raw data, including historical information, can also be accessed through a secure area of the website.
“Monitoring the technology and disseminating the information is a key part of the DKASC project,” CAT Projects manager Lyndon Frearson says.
“We wanted to use a system that was familiar to the utility companies and well-known in the industry. The accuracy of the PowerLogic ION meter data collection and the ability for us to integrate the meters with the rest of the equipment made them a great choice.
“We specified the ION meters and the particular instruments for the weather station quite early in the design. We had quite specific electrical designs in mind, and had also called for tender for a custom designed Structured Query Language (SQL) database to pull the data out of the meters – we were extremely excited when we found that ION Enterprise could do all that work for us.”
Schneider Electric communications gateways and Schneider Electric switchgear were also used in the project.
“We have really pushed the technology as far as it can go,” James says.
“Any ability which the meters have, we have utilised in this project – everything from signal conditioning and alarming input to device mastering and dashboards. We used the complete capabilities of the product and have been able to record good, reliable data with high precision and no holes or gaps.”
As well as providing this information, the site is connected to the local grid and generates 346MWh of electricity a year for the Desert Knowledge precinct.
Solar, solar everywhere
Just down the road, a similar monitoring system has been installed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Alice Springs.
The 305kW solar power plant was, at the time of commissioning in February 2009, the southern hemisphere’s largest roof-mounted system. It involved the installation of over 1,300 individual solar panels and was a joint initiative between the Crowne Plaza Alice Springs and the Federal Government. It was designed by CAT Projects, constructed by SunPower Corporation and installed by AZZO Automation.
The solar arrays produce between 40-80% of the hotel’s power requirements depending on the time of the year, reducing its carbon footprint by 530,000kWh or 420 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
A key element of the project was guest engagement, so CAT Projects designed a ‘sustainability corner’ and worked with SunPower and AZZO Automation to install PowerLogic ION meters throughout the hotel to collect data.
“The sustainability corner allows guests to view the energy that the solar panels are capturing and the percentage of the hotel’s energy usage which is being covered by this renewable resource, in real time,” James says.
“The information is also collected by PowerLogic ION Enterprise and linked to the DKASC website.”
The ION meters have also been installed at the Desert People’s Centre, a learning centre for Aboriginal people from the area. The meters track the energy usage in different buildings and areas, and this information is then used to accurately bill out energy costs to the different title-holders and assist the centre with energy profiling for efficiency tracking.
In addition, AZZO Automation is currently working with CAT Projects for an Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering project called Science and Technology Education Leveraging Relevance (STELR).
This project involves the installation of solar panels and ambient weather sensors at schools throughout Australia, which will be monitored by Schneider Electric PowerLogic meters and Enterprise software. AZZO Automation has been tasked with completing the integration of the technology and ensuring the information is available in real time for the schools to analyse. This data will also be integrated into the DKASC website.
“We have been rapt with how simple the Schneider Electric system is to use,” Lyndon says.
“This is certainly one of the key strengths of the system. We have recently upgraded to ION Enterprise Version 6, and that has made it even easier to generate reports and extract the information we need.”
