Bronte Country Farmhouse

Location

Our install team were expecting Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights fame to turn up on this one! This time, we were at a rustic old farmhouse on top of a windswept moor in the heart of Bronte country. Our client called us as he had been recommended by a local, and the customer had recently had a solar PV installation completed on his farmhouse by a national solar company, but unfortunately the solar PV system had not worked since the national solar company had completed the job. He had lost faith in the national solar company and asked Solar Boost to get them working, so pretty much it was a case of Solar Boost to the rescue! The farmhouse roof was covered with thirty-seven panels facing south, and six panels facing to the north. The six 5kWh batteries had not been synchronised and were not storing any energy. Our client had paid a lot of money to this national company and they simply were not working. Having animals to keep warm during lambing time, and an equine spa to run, every unit of energy was precious and every panel needed to be producing and working efficiently as possible, so our remit from the client was “get them working and produce as much energy as possible”.

Mounting rails were left untrimmed by the original installer, something that Solar Boost were going to fix!

The Job

The national solar panel company had fitted the six panels to the north onto the same string as twenty of the south facing panels, so this meant all of the south facing panels would be limited to the amount of power produced by the north facing panels, and all these panels were on 4mm solar cable. The mounting system to the Yorkshire slate roof had been drilled through each tile and holes had been filled with silicone. The mounting system did not appear to have been secured to the roof structure and so possibly they were secured to the tiles themselves. Solar Boost could not repair the damage done by the national solar company as it would require a re-roof and scaffolding but using a mobile scaffold tower and roof ladders we did what we could to get it working by removing the power limiting north facing string and added new 6mm cable in conduit to the south facing panels. The original install had been completed with 4mm solar cable which was not appropriate for this 43 panel system. We rewired the whole job with 6mm solar cable inside conduit. Inside we found a 6kWh single phase inverter wired into a 12kWh three phase inverter.

Tech Spec

A Hybrid 12kWh 3 Phase Sunsynk inverter with six Sunsynk 5kWh batteries, forty three panels over three south facing roofs, that we repaired and improved! We fitted all panels with Tigo optimisers to maximise output with the different roof heights and shading from a variety of architectural features such as chimneys and dormers.

We met our customer’s remit - his solar panels are now working, and are producing as much energy as possible, thanks to the team at Solar Boost!

After the six batteries had been rewired and synchronised.