Commercial, Microgrids, Sourcing Renewables  -  June 22, 2020

St. Thomas resort upgrades solar system post-hurricanes

Bluebeard’s Castle Resort in the U.S. Virgin Islands received an upgrade to its commercial solar system to increase its capacity after it was damaged during two hurricanes in 2017.

The upgraded system now features 1,637 solar modules and 1,640 microinverters and yields a rating of 524 kW and projected annual energy savings of more than $350,000, despite a decrease in physical solar hardware following the upgrades. The solar system was completed by ProSolar Systems using Enphase Energy microinverters.

“One of the most powerful aspects of using Enphase microinverters at Bluebeard’s Castle is that this complicated solar system is on a single, easy-to-use monitoring platform, which is a major help for long-term operations and maintenance work,” Ashley Edwards, project manager at ProSolar Systems, said in a statement. “We were able to realize significant savings because the original Enphase M250 microinverters, cables, and other balance-of-system components linked right up with the new Enphase IQ 7 microinverters on a single platform. It was even possible to redeploy Enphase microinverters once attached to modules that had been mangled by the storm in a single, 90-module ground-mounted array.”