A farming family in Shropshire were building a new 4 bedroomed oak framed house and adjoining stable block / kennels where there was no existing grid connection. Whilst the cost of a new grid connection from Western Power Distribution was reasonable the family decided that they would rather be off-grid and never have another electricity bill.
Westflight modeled the forecast electrical loads over a 12 month period which would include the house, and a small pheasant hatchery before designing an off grid system to provide an all year around electricity supply. With no resources for hydro or wind power, solar PV is provisioned to supply the required electricity for at least 85% of the year with a diesel powered generator as backup.
A 13kW solar PV array using Longi all black modules feeds two SMA SB5.0 inverters. Two SMA SI8.0 battery inverters are paralleled (master and slave) with 30.6kWh of BYD lithium battery storage. A Stephill 16kVA generator provides backup especially during the hatching season when loads are high and continuity of supply is critical. The system is fully automated and only requires periodic generator servicing.
A SMA Datamanager links the system and provides 24/7 remote performance and fault monitoring on the Ennex OS platform.
