Keeping a whole apartment building cool with 100% solar power
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| Type | Region | Products | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential | Thailand, Mueang Samut Prakan district | 18 × HMS-2000-4T | 30 kW |
Their Story
Battling the heat sends electricity bills soaring
It happens all around the world: When temperatures rise, residents reach for the air conditioning.
And residents of a building in Mueang Samut Prakan district, Bangkok, are just the same. For them, battling the heat often means keeping air conditioners running all day, every day.
But that comfort used to come at a price: The building’s owner was struggling to keep up with electricity bills that just kept climbing.
The owner needed a way to take control of their electricity bills – and make sure residents could still keep their air conditioners running and stay comfortable.
Soon they realized that the cause of the problem – Thailand’s hot, sunny weather – could also help them build a solution. A complete solar power system, with enough capacity to provide the whole building with clean, cost-effective energy.
The owner asked installer J2GD Energy Co. to install the solar system – and the installer decided that Hoymiles was the perfect partner.
Their Solution
Outstanding results without the installation headaches
The project came with a few challenges. The height of the building would make installing panels on the roof difficult, so implementation needed to be as simple as possible.
This made the Hoymiles HMS-2000-4T the perfect microinverter for the job. This microinverter’s innovative four-input design makes it much easier to install than a traditional string inverter.
Setting up the new solar system would have been much more complex if the installer had used a traditional string inverter; a string inverter converts power from all the solar panels in a line in series, which can make setting up larger solar systems more complicated.
But the Hoymiles HMS-2000-4T converts power from each solar panel individually – which means each microinverter can be installed quickly and easily, without needing to worry about complex wiring systems.
The large solar system during installation on the customer’s roof
The building’s owner also wanted to make sure the panels would generate as much energy as possible and that the panels would deliver their promised ROI. But the owner was struggling to locate the network gateway – which meant they needed a system that could work without it.
Hoymiles’ DTU Pro-S data transfer unit was essential here; its ethernet WLAN slot meant that the installer could connect a WLAN cable from the building’s main router gateway, instead of finding the network gateway.
As a result, the installation was much simpler – but the building owner still gets all of the data they need to remotely monitor the performance of their solar system. With that data in their hands, they’re perfectly poised to catch problems early and find opportunities to maximize the amount of power generated by the system.
Their Success
The customer’s electricity bills are under control – without a single resident sacrificing their air conditioning.
Effortless scalability to cover a whole building’s power needs
The building’s owner started by installing a 20 kW solar system to test how this would reduce the building’s energy bills.
The solar system was a success – but not large enough to fulfill all of the building’s power needs.
But once the building’s owner knew they could rely on solar power to cut bills and keep the residents happy, they were ready to take the next step: adding another 10 kW of capacity.
With string inverters, upgrading the system’s capacity like this would have been a long, drawn-out process. Adding new panels may also cause matching problems and drag on the whole system’s performance. But once again, Hoymiles’ easy-install microinverters saved the day. The installer found it easy to add the extra microinverters and panels to the system, and the building owner quickly found themselves taking advantage of a 30 kW solar system.
The project was such a success that it won the Excellence Award in Residential PV for Asia-Pacific.
