System Details
Many farms and small holdings have barns and sheds with large roofs which are perfect to install solar panels on, so that power can be generated for the farmhouse and the farm buildings.
This small holding in Biddulph near Congleton has several barns with metal roofs which are perfect for solar panel installations. We can install solar panels on many different types of agricultural building rooves including metal clad, concrete sheet and fibreglass sheets.
As there were several mature trees next to the barns, we carried out a thorough shading study to see where the shadows from the trees fell on the rooves at different times of the day and this helped us plan where to fit the panels so that they would capture as much sun as possible without having to trim any branches from the trees.
Once we knew where the shadows from the trees fell during the day, we planned the installation of 28 solar panels across the two roofs on the barns on this small holding in Biddulph.
We fitted Enphase micro-inverters to the panels so that any shadows that fell on individual panels at different time of the day would only reduce the output from the shaded panels and not reduce the output from the whole roof. Shading can affect the output of the whole solar panel array if a string inverter is used, so this is one of the advantages of using micro-inverters and this is why we chose to use them on these roofs.
As the panels will produce more energy than the farm will use during the day, we fitted an Enphase IQ 5P 5kWh battery storage system to capture some of the excess electricity produced during the day and this battery would then store the electricity for use later in the day when the sun wasn’t producing as much power. The battery has a second benefit as it can store cheap rate electricity which typically comes from a night rate tariff. The battery can be charged up on a timed basis so that it is full of cheap rate energy that can be used during the day to reduce the use of more expensive day rate electricity.
These 28 panels are expected to generate 7000kWh of electricity in a typical year which matches the annual consumption of the small holding.
Some of the electricity will be used directly on the farm as the sun is shining and part of the solar electricity that is generated will be stored in the battery each day and this increases the self-consumption of the solar energy on the farm by approximately 20%.
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