Solar ElectricDublin Port is Ireland’s biggest port and is spread across a massive area. Like many other similar companies, they were looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and save on energy consumption. So, in 2016 they asked us to look at installing Solar PV on their maintenance and services building. We won the work through a tender process and installed 28KW on their roof.
The main challenge for this project lay in the location of the building and in some parts of their ask. It was a very high building right beside the coast, so the roof was difficult to access. But their client was happy with the initial build and had soon asked to expand the scope of the work. The usage profile of the building varied as some weeks it was operational five days a week and others less. And, they also had a heating requirement.
So, we designed a system for them that would maximize roof space. They had a lot of roof lights which kept natural daylight from going into their workshop. So, we covered some of the redundant roof and we designed a system that would store power efficiently. And this created 178 kW of additional solar PV and a 96-kWh battery storage system.
Then, we also installed two buffer tanks that would feed into the heating system in the offices. So, if you had excess power, it would automatically send power into the buffer tanks as well. Their batteries were flattened to curve in relation to demand. And when they were producing power they would use as much of their own generator power as possible. Finally we installed three immersions in each of the two buffer tanks. And this reduced the need for natural gas in their heating system as well.
Dublin Port were absolutely delighted with the build. We forecast what it would produce as part of our tender and the project reached that and more on its first year. While the battery storage system was the optimal size at 96 kWh to be able to export to the grid at a profit.