Lightsource and Eaton developing 11MW of solar parks in the UK

Lightsource Renewable Energy, the well known  United Kingdom based developer, owner and operator specializing in PV installations, just finished completing the development of three solar parks  located all around the United Kingdom. The biggest park developed until now is located in Cambridgeshire and has an installed capacity of 5MW, the other two solar parks are in Devon and produce 2.5 MW and 3.5 MW.

For these projects to take place, Lightsource Renewable Energy partnered with Solarcentury, also a UK based solar panel designer/manufacturer, which has a very good engineering and project management team, also they teamed up with Eaton’s Electrical Sector. This company, which is a major player on the market for power management systems came with the knowhow and the actual hardware in installing BoS (balance of system) for each of the three solar parks.

In order to get connected to the power grid, Eaton played a significant part by designing/supplying and installing eight substations, all of them custom made for the project.

The solar energy flows from the solar park into Eaton DC junction boxes and from there into some SolarMax TS-SV 330kW inverters(which help in achieving maximum power point (“MPP”) efficiencies of 99%).; these feed into  Eaton’s Memform low-voltage switchboards.  These substations contain some 280V to 11kV transformers and Eaton Xiria 11kV ring main units with integral G59 protection. This technology helps reducing maintenance requirements and also plays a significant part in cutting the environmental impact of the equipment during the time of manufacture and at the end-of-life disposal.

These custom made substations courtesy of Eaton provide a very important connection between the PV panels and the national power distribution grid. With this installation, the company has extended its strong presence is the solar energy sector.

Thanks to the significant progress in solar panel technology, the large scale solar developments in the United Kingdom became more common and cost effective, this was evident in the last 18 months.

For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/