Today’s world is quickly running out of traditional fossil fuels used in providing an ever-increasing need for electricity and transport. Simply put, unless we capture the most abundant natural energy source to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for electricity, things will stop.
The sun provides an effective alternative that needs to be captured. Over the last 30 years, solar energy has proven that when captured either passively through effective building design or actively through solar technologies such as photovoltaic panels, the sun’s energy can generate sufficient energy to power the energy needs of thousands of people, businesses and companies alike.
Today, solar technologies are the most advanced they have ever been. The world needs to invest in these technologies to decrease its reliance on fossil fuels. In doing so, companies, businesses and individuals learn how to improve technologies and systems that then lead onto greater efficiencies. Remember that Karl Friedrich Benz only invented the true automobile in 1885. Designed as a three-wheel tricycle with enough seats for two other passengers, this ‘horseless carriage’ changed the future of the world in terms of transportation, town planning and man’s appetite for invention. In fact, it was Kurt’s wife Frau Berta Benz who in 1888 with their two sons Richard and Eugen travelled 62 miles Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother and entered the record books as the first long car trip.
Today solar technologies provide us with the next chapter in the generation of electricity and like the cars of the 1880’s are at the forefront of man’s inventiveness. For those astute enough to capture this growing trend of generating your own energy through the utilizing the sun, the benefits will simply grow and grow…….
Global Solar Brokers provides services to facilitate the development of solar parks. In our mind these fall into the following arenas:
Medium Scale Systems – 30kW to 5mW
30kW – 1mW
The roof space (or land area) required is approximately 400sq.m to 1-2 hectares for solar parks of this size.
These particular systems are suitable for small flat roofed factories that are common in all recently developed industrial estates and are particularly useful in reducing large daylight electricity expenditure, up to large purpose built structures with large equipment, storage and access requirements such as shopping centres and medium size solar farms for simple power generation and feed –in-tariff revenue.
1mW- 5mW
These size systems lend themselves to projects in remote areas, for example outback areas of Australia, where they would power settlements or small towns, particularly aboriginal settlements and mining towns, communication facilities and the like. In so doing the reliance on diesel for power generation would be significantly reduced, if not eliminated all together. Such solar parks require sophisticated battery systems and inverter controllers to meet non-daylight usage needs.
Systems of this size can also be used on purpose built structures designed to cater for renewable energy generation, such as the new Boeing production plant in USA that has a 2.6mW system on the roof.
Large Scale Systems - 5mW+
We are talking serious power users now. Most 24/7 users, such as mining operations, smelters and the like need these systems, with the typical size commencing from 10mW. Again it’s the designing for non-daylight hours, which requires careful consideration in these projects as a combination of renewable resources to meet their electricity demand may be the best option..