This detached property in Hook, Hampshire lent itself brilliantly to accommodating solar panels on the roof. Maximising the surface area, panels were fitted to both the rear and the side elevations of the property’s roof.

THE CHALLENGE

Crucial to create a blank canvas for the rails and panels, the roof needed cleaning to remove all the moss. Cutting corners by missing out important preparations could be costly further on in the installation process.

The property consisted of a detached garage and to ensure the inverter and battery cables could run to the garage from the panels on the roof, paving slabs were carefully lifted and cable ducting was installed.

In addition to the cable ducting, the actual cables needed to be installed separately. This was quite important because of different voltages of the cables i.e., the DC cables from the panels are high voltage and a different voltage to the mains cables from the house to the garage.

THE SOLUTION

The installation consisted of 12 TRINA 435 panels which were a free upgrade from the 425 variant of the high performance panels. A GivEnergy 5KW hybrid inverter was installed along with two 9.5KWh GivEnergy batteries. The second battery was installed to assist with off-peak charging in winter.

Installation

After the scaffolding was erected and the roof cleaned and cleared of moss, the rails were fixed into place and the high-performance panels secured in place.

The cables were then run from the house to the garage, and then the inverter and batteries were neatly wired to the wall within the double garage.

Failsafe

As the customer wished to protect himself from the likelihood of power cuts in the future, UK Green Energy Installations recommended and installed an emergency power supply from the inverter back to the existing consumer unit via a changeover switch. This then allows the customer to use the storage in the batteries when there is a power cut.