The Grewar family have been farming potatoes, cereals, and oils in Perthshire since 1905 and are now in their 4th generation at East Ardler Farm.

The Grewar family  were keen to explore sustainable technologies for a number of reasons:

Firstly, the cold storage of potatoes is heavy on energy consumption and at the scale of operations at East Ardler Farm purchasing power from the grid can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Secondly, the growing importance of  improving the sustainability of the supply chain for their customers.

Consultation

Following a comprehensive site survey to assess the roof and electrical conditions, and detailed energy monitoring, we identified multiple suitable roofs that had the potential for solar PV.

The East Ardler Farm site had an export limitation of 250kW so it was important to design a system without too much export. Our survey found that the varying orientation of roofs would provide power at different times of the day, increasing self-consumption.

Detailed design

• Complicated design work was carried out to ensure the PV system worked alongside an existing Combined Heat and Power plant and the 250kW grid export limit.
• Designs were optimised to get the most efficiency out of the panels. This includes mounting and shade analysis.
• The electrical design included G59 connection to the grid.
• As part of the project all the cold stores had DICAM software installed which can control the temperature of the cold stores based on available solar energy, this reduced export, and increased ROI.
  

Installation 

Our commercial solar team installed a 250 kWp system in 2013 and another 487 kWp in 2020 on 4 buildings. 

Technologies

Inverters: Solis and ABB PowerOne

Panels: Jinko Solar  

Mounting kit: K2 and Renusol