Candidate 4, Intellisol: Perfectly planned for Mercedes in Belgium
Intellisol has recently connected a solar PV installation at a newly built Mercedes car dealership in Belgium. Herman Daniels explained at Intersolar Europe how Intellisol won the rights to develop a solar PV rooftop system for the group IAM, winning out against four other firms eager for the business. IAM had been looking to create a new Mercedes car dealership in Belgium, but to do so in a smarter, more energy efficient way. Enter Intellisol.
They asked us to design a PV installation for this dealership, but nobody knew how much energy this building was going to use, so that was the big difficulty, said Daniels. As a completely new building, unused for one-third of the time, and with a low and decreasing feed-in tariff (FIT) for solar applications, the challenges were vast. Revenues on the installation were poor, and so we had to stress as much as possible the importance of self-consumption, with storage not yet an option due to safety regulations. IAM, nevertheless, wanted to cover the entire roof with PV, and wanted 10% discounted cash flow guarantee. To win the trust of the owner, as Daniels puts it, Intellisol made an in-depth energy profile analysis on IAMs other showrooms, looking at how they used energy generally. The company then made a quarterly hour consumption analysis and projected this on to the new showroom, allied to NASA meteorological data to assess the types of conditions it would be subjected to.
Intellisol also designed an energy usage calculation tool to enable them to strike the perfect balance between energy production, consumption, storage and feed-in. This tool displayed to IAM how a typical dealership uses its electricity, when its peaks are during the day, every quarter hour, and over the course of the year. This intelligent approach to assessing energy usage patterns and displaying it simply meant that Intellisol was able to assess that the rooftop PV array needed to only be 81.4 kWp and not cover the entire roof. This system was sized to meet 32% of the plants energy needs (using 296 Hanwha Q Cells modules) taking into account the various peaks and troughs of a typical dealerships energy use patterns. Only 35.6% of the energy produced was sent back to the grid, which meant a payback time on paper of 9-9.5 years for IAM with a discounted cash flow (DCF) of 10.2 11.4 %.
If Intellisol had covered the entire roof with a PV array (requiring 761 modules), DCF would have been just 6.5 7.6%, with a payback time of up to 15 years. This is where Intellisol won the project.
Click to vote and win an iphone 6
(Once you are confident you can correctly answer one of the four questions posed)
Candidate 1, maxx-Solar:
What does the school earn with the rented PV installation if the self consumtion rate is 90%?
(400, 800 or 1200 Euro)
the answer you can find here
Candidate 2, BIG:
How many containers are required to build an urban rigger?
(3, 6 or 9)
the answer you can find here
Candidate 3, Solartechnik Mitteldeutschland:
How much do the inhabitants of the 16 houses save thanks to the almost-autonomous mini smart grid?
(5% energy costs, 10% energy costs or 15% energy costs)
the answer you can find here
Candidate 4, Intellisol:
What percentage of the dealerships energy use is covered by the Intellisol PV installation?
(70%, 85% or 100%)
the answer you can find here
Click to watch the pitchVoting is open until Friday evening, July 8.
Candidate 2, Bjark Ingels Group: Living Tomorrow in Sweden.
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is a Danish company that is working on creating a floating neighborhood in Gothenburg, Sweden, called Living Tomorrow Sweden. BIG has been building student housing in inner city areas for many years, and for this project hit upon the idea of placing housing on barges in the river that runs through Gothenburg. One of the key factors for this project, explains BIGs Jakob Lange, was to use shipping containers, thus enabling owners to ship these homes easily around the world. The containers can be configured together in groups of nine homes urban riggers boasting internal courtyard views and interconnected communities, right there on the water.
Each rigger can be clustered to create larger communities. As harbors across Europe and elsewhere become abandoned or fall out of favor, new uses for this space are being explored. Residential dwellings have long been seen as a desirable option, and BIG wanted to take the concept further building not just student accommodation, but homes that were zero energy, made from upcycled materials and embraced the opportunities offered by new renewable energy technologies such as solar PV panels.
The riggers produce more energy than they consume. The homes are well insulated and made from upcycled shipping containers a production process that uses one-twentieth of the energy typically required to construct a similar dwelling.
The Gothenburg project will have a green garden route and also allow inhabitants to enjoy the space fully including sailing and swimming in the water, maximizing the views offered by the harbor, and developing an interconnected energy system whereby each urban rigger can feed or draw energy from their neighbours. Shipping of a prototype urban riggers has already begun, Lange said.
Click to vote and win an iphone 6
(Once you are confident you can correctly answer one of the four questions posed)
Candidate 1, maxx-Solar:
What does the school earn with the rented PV installation if the self consumtion rate is 90%?
(400, 800 or 1200 Euro)
the answer you can find here
Candidate 2, BIG:
How many containers are required to build an urban rigger?
(3, 6 or 9)
the answer you can find here
Candidate 3, Solartechnik Mitteldeutschland:
How much do the inhabitants of the 16 houses save thanks to the almost-autonomous mini smart grid?
(5% energy costs, 10% energy costs or 15% energy costs)
the answer you can find here
Candidate 4, Intellisol:
What percentage of the dealerships energy use is covered by the Intellisol PV installation?
(70%, 85% or 100%)
the answer you can find here
Click to watch the pitch
here.Voting is open until Friday evening, July 8.
Candidate 1, maxx-solar & energy: Innovative financing solutions for PV in Africa
maxx-solar & energy has arranged financing for a PV plant on the Dominican Grimley School; a school for the deaf attended by some 100 children.
Candidate 3, Solartechnik Mitteldeutschland: Innovative PV and CHP project for tenanted apartment buildings
Innovative PV and cogeneration tenant project for a multi-family dwelling.
Southern Power acquires controlling interest in SunPower's 102 MW Henrietta solar project
The subsidiary of utility Southern Company owns large portion of the Californian solar plant, which was built and developed by SunPower, which still owns remaining interest in the project.
More than 600 readers have already voted
600 readers have already placed their vote for one of the four nominees chosen for the Installation Innovation award. Now it’s your turn to take part: read the descriptions of the projects to be placed in a raffle to win an iPhone 6.
Solar panels power spacecraft into Jupiter's orbit 800 million KM away from the sun
It is the furthest away from the sun that solar panels have produced energy, helping NASA’s Juno spacecraft enter the orbit of the solar systems largest planet, in a groundbreaking mission that highlights the capabilities of solar technology.
OneRoof Energy to sell 19.8 MW of solar project assets
The San Diego-based company signed agreements to sell the solar assets, with gross proceeds of up to $61 million expected from the transactions, which will help the company follow its current growth model.
Jinko Solar looking to invest in innovation
Jinko Solar’s Senior Technical Manager Juan Carlos González joined pv magazine’s Jonathan Gifford to talk about Jinkos award winning new modules, the Eagle series. The new modules have been optimized by Silicon Valley company Maxim, which has helped them increase performance and eliminate hot spots, among other things.
European solar industry puts forward case to end trade measures on Chinese PV
SolarPower Europe appears to be the driving force behind a letter, signed by 34 European solar and renewable energy organizations, calling on the EU to immediately remove the trade measures that exist against imports of Chinese PV modules and cells.
