BM Solar: Selective optimisation on Tate Modern plant with BM technology

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The iconic tall chimney that marks London’s skyline is a constant reminder of the transition from a fossil-fuel based economy to an increasingly sustainable distributed energy mix, where solar keeps showing the highest potential for further deployment in urban environments.

Long-sighted British solar energy companies such as Solarcentury have always had a strong focus on rooftops, where photovoltaics can make use of existing surfaces to generate energy unobtrusively, silently and with no emissions.

Rooftop solar energy system design comes with its own challenges, as chimneys, vents and surrounding buildings often cause partial shading during part of the day.

Photovoltaic plants are made of strings of panels connected in series, therefore partial shading on even just one of the panels would normally affect the performance of a whole section of the plant. In the past, many rooftops were considered unfeasible for solar energy, as the constraints posed by partial shading outweighed the benefits of the installation.

BlackMagic optimisers harvest the energy that is otherwise lost due to panel mismatch, by enabling each panel in a string to perform at its best at any one time. PV designers and asset managers may choose to optimise just specific sections of a plant where mismatch is high. Therefore, optimisation with BM technology can be targeted to the areas which can bring the highest benefits. BM optimisation may also be tested on a small section of a prior to extending the optimisation to a whole plant.

BlackMagic optimisers can be used with any PV module and inverter. No additional components are required.