Brent, Morgan,

I am working with CSL on a small project for some solar panels near their satellite office in the North Campus Parking Garage. CSL mentioned that Canadian Solar is one of the approved suppliers to the campus.

You probably know that Canadian Solar, in spite of its name, is mostly a Chinese supplier, although they have a more modest plant in Canada. The largest Chinese supplier is Jinko Solar, which in my experience is a bit better in quality.

I am hoping we can spin up a higher-quality U.S. supplier, such as Sunpower, as an alternative to the various foreign providers.

Philip T. Krein, Ph.D., P.E.

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Hi Sush and Brian,

I am working on this research project at the North Campus Parking Deck to put solar panels on the canopy on the outside of the south side of the building.  They will be feeding them into a research space to power servers.  They actually want to have the panels directly power a battery and then power the servers from the battery.  I provided the cutsheets of the panels we used at the President’s Shed.  These fit the weight and size dimension requirements.  As we have used them before, they are therefore “pre-approved.”  One of the researchers, Philip, is asking about using something different in the email below.  Can you please assist in a response? 

Also, as far as I knew, we hadn’t done any large battery systems on campus.  Possibly that is incorrect, but in asking recently I came up with nothing.  Please take a look at the cutsheet for the enphase and see if we would be ok with this one.  If not, please provide some additional direction.

Thanks!

Brent.

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Brent,

I’m not aware that we have approved “vendors” for solar panels nor for inverters and such equipment.  Also, I not aware of where we would have a PV system using storage, the few I’m familiar with are grid tie systems.

How big of a system are they looking at?

Brian Curtis Finet, PE

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Brian,

We will still tie this to the grid as a back up, back up power supply.  They would have 18 panels total along that canopy. I know we don’t have any officially “approved” vendors, but since we used the ones at the President’s House, we had approved them through construction.  Originally the researchers picked out what they wanted, but the manufacturer didn’t want to deal with us, so I threw out using the ones we’ve already installed here at least once. 

I am not 100% certain if this is to power 3 new servers with 3 new batteries, or 3 new servers, with only one battery.  Based on the last email, it appeared we would only be looking at one battery for the backup.  I can put you in touch with the MEP if you would rather talk directly.

Thanks,

Brent.

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Brent,

Apart from Brian’s comments, here some things I would consider if the owner has concerns and this is how I would plan on choosing a panel vendor.

1. Panel Efficiency, Im talking about the amount of energy produced with respect to area. w/m2 (Also depends what type of panel polycrystalline or monocrystalline). Higher the panel efficiency higher is the energy produced per m2.
2. Next is quality, Chinese panel have a reputation of being made of cheap material but Canadian solar has been good performing for its price. It can measured by knowing history of the panel performance.
3. Warranty, I would compare at the 10 years manufacturer warranty and make sure there isn’t any expensive service contract involved. Also key to understand where so you have to send the panel incase you receive a faulty one.
4. Panel specifications are another factor, compare characteristics like coefficient of temperature & power tolerance.
5. Lastly, cost and aesthetics, since it is on the canopy I would think they want something pretty and cost, how much are they willing to shell.

My final thoughts - Sunpower has a better rating, reliability and warranty compared to Canadian solar (last I checked its been a year or so) but it also comes at higher $$.

Thanks,

Sushanth Girini