The University of Queensland in Brisbane has become Australia’s first building that has installed the largest flat-panel photovoltaic solar power system.
Only 6 percent of the electricity generated by the system is enough to power the St. Lucia campus, which is not small, after all. It is estimated that the entire rooftop solar system is able to generate around 1.22MW of clean energy.
The huge amount of power generation is made possible due to the 5004 solar panels installed on the rooftops of four of UQ’s largest buildings.
The people inside the campus will have access to the project with the help of a website, which will show live and historical data about the solar energy produced from the UQ solar array.
“The project is enhanced by its strong industry partnerships, including research agreements with a number of world-leading companies in renewable power,” Professor Greenfield said.
Seven big companies in the field have participated in creating this project.
Brisbane firm Ingenero has installed the solar array and worked on its design and engineering aspects. Trina Solar was the company who supplied the solar panels. The necessary equipment for the high-quality monitoring and analysis of the power feed from the UQ solar array has been donated by electricity retailer Energex.
Compared to any other flat-panel PV system in Australia, the 1.22 megawatt UQ Solar array is almost 25 per cent larger.
[via Ecofriend/Architecture and Design]
