Solar Power Generation
A Nursery Traders project
Nursery Traders’ large expanse of on-site building roofs has proven a rich asset.
We decided to use the roof space not only to capture water for re-use, but also to capture radiated energy we receive from the sun through a solar power generation system.
Aiming to source the majority of the nursery’s power needs from renewable energy, we installed 114 * 210 watt solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of the Nursery Traders market display building. We also installed a duplicate system on the plant distribution centre.
The system—commissioned in March 2010—is believed to be the largest privately owned solar power generation system in Queensland. Moreover, it is currently the largest installation of Kyocera solar panels in Australia and the largest installation of Aurora inverters in Australia.
The total peak power output for each system is 23.94 kilowatts—estimated to produce
an average 208 kilowatt-hours per day. This daily supply is sufficient to power:
- 3466 x 60 watt incandescent light bulbs for an hour
- 3851 x fluorescent tubes for an hour
- 9454 x LED tubes (replacement for fluorescent tubes) for an hour, or
- 14 857 x compact fluorescent light bulbs for an hour
The total expected power generated by the system annually is 76 megawatt-hours
We chose photovoltaic energy because the radiated energy we receive from the sun
is transformed directly into electrical energy without any combustion process and
without producing any pollution—providing an estimated annual reduction in CO2 emissions
of 79,412.32 kilograms.
When the photovoltaic system is not generating sufficient energy to meet our operational
needs, we take our remaining power needs from the public power grid. When we generate
excess energy, we feed our power directly to the grid to make it available to other
users.
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