Providing schools with solar PV systems

In Australia, the federal government decided to include environmental responsibility as part of the education process, providing schools with grants for solar PV systems, solar hot water systems and rain-water storage so that students could be exposed to and educated on green activities. Each solar system is connected to the school’s main power grid to provide green power to the school and reduce the school’s carbon footprint. Here, Matthew Hawkridge, Chief Technology Officer at Ovarro, explains how Ovarro is helping Australia to deliver 300,000 tonnes of CO2 abatement.

The Australian Government provided funding for schools to install solar panels, primarily for education purposes. The panels were connected to each schools’ power supply, reducing emissions, but also connected to a cloud-based monitoring system, to enable access to data for both students and the local community. TBox RTU’s were among the approved data collection devices and installed at 200 sites.

TBox RTU’s are designed with a high degree of flexibility so that they can collect data from multiple sources and share that data with multiple recipients. In the Solar for Schools programme, the government, the students, the school, and the community could all review published data, each with their own interest in what was provided.

Respectively, the government needed to track the emission reduction, the school needed to monitor the continued safe operation of the equipment, the students were engaged in learning how solar panels supplied their energy needs, even on cloudy days, and the community were able to share in the learning experience, as well as discover the effectiveness of solar panels in their locality.

Each user of the system has a different need for a different data set, and often needs the data presented in a different way. TBox RTU’s are ideal for collating data from many sources, analysing the available information and reporting results to multiple sources in multiple formats, satisfying multiple parties concurrently. The TBox is a complete SCADA system in a single site controller.

Using this technology, real time monitoring and control of power generation and secure access to data by novice users were achieved, while stakeholders were provided with the required data and there were able to use a single device for all logging, comms, alarming I/O and local data presentation.