Solar Panel Upgrades!
Thanks to everyone who donated to our Solar campaign this summer!
We have completed the successful installation of the new equipment, located between the Commons building and the garden.
The great folks at Pro Solar Engineering helped us design an updated and upgraded system to meet our needs. They acquired all the components along with wire, switches, surge protectors, couplers and breakers; brought all of it out to our remote field station and installed it. We are appreciative and excited.
The solar generating capacity has been increased to 65kWh as we were able to successfully incorporate our existing panels into the new system. Our new equipment includes 30 panels rated at 435W. These are installed in the array shown off here by Jacob.
In our power room, there is a new 15kWh inverter for better load management and switching. We can now use an app to monitor real-time operation of solar production, battery levels, load consumption and other metrics. This will help us figure out when we use the most energy, so we can strategize conservation measures.
Another new component in the power room is a 10-pack battery bank totaling 50kWh of storage. This will allow us to keep the freezers running on solar power, even on rainy days. We are happy that the engineers were able to better integrate our back-up generator for smoother switching. We don’t use a lot of power in the rainy season, but it is important to keep the essential systems online when the sun doesn’t come out for several days in a row.
We are pleased to be living off the grid at BFREE. For several years we have dreamed of a larger, updated solar power generation system that could meet the demands of a growing field station.
We are extremely grateful to the organizations and individuals that made our dreams into reality. We would like to extend special thanks to Zoo New England, Nature Trust of the Americas Inc, The Gregory Family Foundation, Diana Foster and the many individuals that responded to our matching campaign this summer. You are very appreciated.
