Initial Assessment

We visited Singapore Polytechnic to meet Mr Dilip Battul, principal lecturer and our designated point of contact for the Solar Lab. Our first step was to decide on a good location for our off-grid solar installation. Mr Battul had two possible site locations in mind: the rooftops of T-12 and T-22.

During the site visit, we would be considering these several points:

• Insolation and shading effects
• Indoor location for battery room
  
• Grounding and lightning protection

The existing 20kWp solar installation at T-22 was known as the Solar Energy Farm. There were about 300 PV panels, 6 solar trackers and also 2 wind turbines on that rooftop. Interestingly, this solar installation had been constructed since 1998 and must have been one of the first few major PV projects in Singapore!


The rows of PV arrays. They were built facing north, but its not much of an issue since we're sitting so near the equator:

The Siemens Solar 75-watt modules used:

Module specifications:

The battery room, and housing for all the peripheral equipment. We might also be able to use some space inside the room for our system:

T-22 seemed quite promising since there was still ample roof space for additional PV systems to be installed. The photo below was facing east, which meant that the sun's path throughout the day would run parallel to the building featured. This was ideal since the shading posed by the neighbouring building is minimised if we located the panels in the centre:


The second possible site was at T-12, the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. The total area was less than that of T-22 but more than enough for what we would need for the telecom testbed.

The building was one of the tallest in the vicinity, which was a good thing. This meant that shading from other buildings can be avoided. However, we still had to prevent shading from the taller sections of the rooftop, especially the high parapet walls surrounding the roof area.

Unfortunately, the problem with the T-12 roof was that it didnt have a sealed room where we could store our batteries and equipment. This made the site less appealing in terms of practicality.

Our first choice is the T-22 rooftop. The next step forward is now to get official clearance from the SP Estates Department for the solar project, which Mr Battul would be helping us with.