Hardware & General is a well-established building, plumbing, timber, and hardware supplier based in Sydney, Australia. To reduce their rising energy bills, they contacted local energy provider Power Ideas to design and install a solar system to manage their energy costs.

Power Ideas specialises in designing energy solutions for residential and commercial customers in New South Wales and Queensland.

Power Ideas designed, installed, and commissioned the 79.7kW solar system at one of their stores. The system features:

  • 168 x 475W Jinko Neo 60-cell Solar panels
  • 2 x FIMER’s PVS-30 three-phase string inverter.

The PVS-10/33 is an Italian-made three-phase fuse-free string inverter that comes in six power sizes, including 10kW, 12.5kW, 15kW, 20kW, 30kW and 33kW and is an ideal solution for large residential and commercial & industrial applications.

The PVS-30 offers reliability, high performance and flexibility with 145% DC/AC power oversizing capability, a maximum string input voltage of 1,100V and 4 MPPTs with 2 input pairs per MPPT.

fimer

This flexibility enabled the Power Idea’s team to design a solution using FIMER’s string sizer tool that would maximise the generation of the FIMER/Jinko solar system. With the 475W Jinko panels and two PVS-30 inverters, the optimal solution allowed for each tracker to have 21 panels connected.

FIMER’s String Sizer Tool is a free online tool that allows solar designers to input the site location, low and high temperatures and select either a pre-configured PV module specification or manually enter them instead. It then helps them choose the optimal FIMER inverter configuration and create a design report detailing the allowable and optimum string configurations, which provides the designer with options to choose the most appropriate design for the solar installation.

The PVS-10/33 inverter family is backed by a comprehensive ten-year replacement warranty when installed in Australia and New Zealand to provide further peace of mind.

Shivendra Seth, National Sales Manager from Power Ideas, said, “We have been using FIMER’s inverters for our residential customers for over two years and have started to install their newest PVS-10/33 inverters for our commercial customers. We have been extremely impressed not only by the quality and performance of the system but with FIMER’s local support.”

FIMER has a dedicated support team in Sydney that provides technical support to installers and end customers regarding their FIMER solar system.

Zain Sakarwala, FIMER Australia’s Technical Sales Lead, said, “FIMER Australia’s engineers are also qualified Clean Energy Council solar and battery designers and can provide technical guidance when designing a system as well as support during the installation and commissioning process.”

The system is connected to FIMER’s Aurora Vision monitoring solution, enabling Power Ideas to view and manage the system in real-time. Hardware & General opted to integrate FIMER’s solution with Solar Analytics, which allows them to combine detailed reporting with the tools and ability to pick an energy retailer offering the best plans.

In the first two months since commissioning, the 79.7kW system has generated over 7.5MWh, saving approximately 13 tonnes of carbon emissions.