The Martians have landed again... with their stuff

4-3-2008 (Day Positive 1)

Finally, the date we've all been waiting for... The colonization of the T-12 rooftop begins today! This is the day when the equipment would be sent over from our Conergy office (along Cecil Street) to Singapore Polytechnic (along Dover Road).

It was a major logistics movement. A grand total of six people (Jos, Boon, Lin, Benjamin, Linda and Terence) were mobilized on that nice Thursday morning. In total, more than 700 kg of equipment, tools and people would be transported! List of equipment:

PV modules

• Yingli 11oWp
• Jiawei 90Wp module
• Kaneka 92Wp module
• Conergy STM
  
• Mounting structures
  
• SunForte upgrade kit
  
• SolarFamulus
  

Charge controllers

• Apollo T-80 turbocharger
• Plasmatronics PL-20
  
• Morningstar TS-60 and TS-RM (with Fatspaniel Communicator and GPRS modem)
  

Batteries

• HBL NIFE TGI100 batteries
• FIAMM PMF 100 batteries

Miscellaneous components

• Conergy off-grid MIC inverters
  
• SunTechnics street light module
• Solar Home System demonstration kit

Everyone working hard (and Linda, not shown in pictures, was clicking furiously away on the camera):

The logistics certainly got everyone excited, even Boon was there to join in the fun. After recovering from his near-death experience with the bird-flu, he was still so eager to be involved. He was overheard saying, "I'm feeling okay, a little bird can't kill me.." Wow, words from a great man!

Arrival at the Singapore Polytechnic, finally:

Crew and equipment (well... most of the equipment) arrived without a scratch after some top-notch driving from the truck driver.

Even Jos agrees... He was overheard proclaiming: "Mujur saya tidak mati lah!" (whatever that means) :

Unloading process:


The completed battery room:


And the interior:

Unfortunately, there was no installation carried out on the first day. The day ended quite early since most of the team had to return to office in the afternoon. The massive logistics operations had inevitably taken its toll on the brave team.

The PV panels, mounting structures, batteries, wires and all other components were stored inside the battery room until the next installation date which would probably happen in the next week.

Until then, stay tuned for more updates to the Solar Lab!

T-12 reloaded

22-2-2008 (Day Negative 40)

The Green Team made a trip back to Singapore Polytechnic today and met up with Mr Chen Shu Kai for the first time. He was our new designated liaison since Mr Battul had to leave for Japan for a work assignment and could not make it for the second recce trip.

Our objective for today was to gauge the feasibility of the Solar Lab at T-12 rooftop, and also to explore the possible options that we had for our battery room.

The site was revisited:

There was sufficient roof space for several systems to be installed, and little shading posed from the surroundings since it was one of the tallest buildings in that area.


As for the battery room, the most viable option was to utilize the space in front of the lift landing. This narrow corridor near the lift landing was also considered.


Even the store room was not spared in our search for room space. This is the entrance to the storeroom, taken from the earlier site visit when Mr Battul was around:

However, it was not a good choice since the room was far too small, already filled with stores, and would be accessed by other workers. We wouldn't have much space to play around with here.
After our short meeting with Shu Kai, the dimensions and placement for the room were quickly proposed:

And below is our artistic impression of how the room would be utilized. It's quite artistic, considering that this came from a bunch of engineers:


Updated 27 Feb: Shu Kai informed that the entire construction process would take only about 3 weeks once the design is confirmed. That was great news! We had expected it to be much longer.

The excellent coordination from Shu Kai had made things very easy for us so far. With the battery room construction now in progress, the whole project is right back on track. The Solar Lab finally has a home!

Some days are rainy...

28-1-2008 (Day Negative 65)

Updates from Mr Battul: There would be waterproofing and possibly other reconstruction works on the rooftop of T-22. As such, we might have to concentrate our efforts on T-12 instead. Not too good news considering that a battery room has to be specially constructed. This might mean additional delays for the team.

Anyway, another site visit would be scheduled for the T-12 rooftop and to discuss about the proposed battery room.

It's the rainy season, so pls stay dry (like this waterproof girl):

And some rain comics to chase the blue away:

Rain clouds would disperse soon...
Sunny days ahead for the green team!

The Martians have landed

11-1-2008 (Day Negative 82)

We visited Singapore Polytechnic to meet Mr Dilip Battul, principal lecturer and our designated point of contact for the Solar Lab. Our next step was to decide on a good location for our off-grid solar installation. Unfortunately, Jos was not able to make for this meeting as he had fly to Thailand the week before.

Enjoy your tom-yam soup Jos, we've taken lots of photos for you!


Mr Battul brought us to possible site locations at the rooftops of T-12 and T-22. 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 PV modules used:

The battery room, and housing for all the peripheral equipment:

T-22 seemed quite promising since there was still ample roof space for additional PV systems to be installed. We might also be able to use some space inside the existing battery room for our system:


We also took some time to visit the second possible site at T-12, which was the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. The roof area was less than that of T-22 but more than enough for what we would need for the telecom testbed.

However, the problem with the T-12 roof was that it didnt have a sealed room where we could store our batteries and equipment.

Our 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.

Stay tuned for more sunny updates =)