As part of the integrated resource plan (IRP) South Africans will see the development of large solar PV plants in excess of 5 MW that will feed power into the Eskom grid by 2013. Besides the need for large scale PV plants there is also a need for smaller roof top installations: sizes varying from 10 kW to 1 MW depending on the roof area. Many rooftops belonging to businesses, banks, factories and shopping centres have large areas and would be suitable for a rooftop PV installation. The type of installation depends on the roof structure.
IBR roof structures need aluminium mounting reels and brackets for the fastening of the modules. For concrete roof structures there is a new free standing knubix aerodynamic structure which is light weight and self-supporting without roof penetration. The installation time for a 30 kW system is approximately two weeks. Besides the modules and the mounting structures there are other components required such as DC cabling and grid tied DC inverters to convert the DC power generated by the solar modules to AC. This power can then be fed into the internal power supply of the building. To avoid feeding the PV energy into the Eskom grid the system should be designed so that own consumption is higher than the power produce by the PV plant. As an option there are data communication systems available which record the solar radiation and the power the PV plant produces per day. This information can be transmitted via Ethernet and GSM to an information centre.
The investment into a rooftop PV can help companies to combat spiralling electricity prices, the recently announced tax benefits for commercial PV installations makes it even more appealing.
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