Introduction

Florida Gulf Coast University

In 2009, Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) initiated an ambitious effort to address global warming by making its campuses more sustainable through increased reliance on alternative forms of energy. The school received $8.5 million from the Florida legislature to develop the world’s largest solar installation at a college or university. The solar field, which is deployed over 12 acres of the FGCU campus, will generate 2 megawatts per day and will save the university up to a million dollars annually in energy costs over the estimated 30-year life of the project.

Draker was selected to provide all data acquisition and performance monitoring needs for the project, which features ground mounted single-axis trackers to optimize solar energy yield. Click here to view the FGCU project.

Green Mountain Coffee

As part of its commitment to demonstrate the effectiveness of renewable energies, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) had a 100kW rooftop PV system installed at their corporate headquarters in Waterbury, VT. The PV system, which was installed by groSolar in the fall of 2009, offsets up to 20% of the plant’s energy needs. Draker was selected as the turnkey provider of data acquisition and performance monitoring of the PV power plant. The Draker Sentalis platform includes all hardware instrumentation and web services for performance reporting and maintenance alerts.

In order to obtain greater resolution and granularity of solar to DC conversion efficiency, GMCR elected to have Draker deploy its highly accurate and reliable string-level monitoring solution. This capability allows operators to isolate the performance of 49 separate array strings so that they can quickly pinpoint locations within the system that may require maintenance.

The Draker system also includes a kiosk display that lets customers and employees see how much power is currently being generated by the solar panels as well as how much power has been produced since the project’s inception.

Siemens Transportation

In 2008, Siemens Mobility commissioned a 1.16MW solar power plant at its manufacturing facility in Sacramento, CA. The solar installation is mounted over the facility’s rooftop and carport structure and provides the organization with a substantial portion of its total electrical needs.

Photon Energy Services selected Draker as the monitoring partner to track the performance, operations and maintenance of the solar power plant. This project helps Siemens save about 750 tons of CO2 emissions a year and is expected to provide about 50% of the location’s manufacturing power requirements.

Mazza Recycling

Mazza and Sons, a full service demolition and recycling facility in New jersey, handles more than 1000 tons of construction, demolition, and waste materials on a daily basis. Motivated by a high demand for energy, they decided to put a 218kW solar array on their roof to mitigate their escalating energy costs. The PV system was installed by Solar Energy Systems (SES) and is owned and operated by Soltage, which uses a solar power purchase agreement (SPPA) to sell the electricity generated by the PV system directly to Mazza at a fixed price over a long term contract.

Soltage has partnered with Draker labs to track and report the amount of energy delivered on a monthly and annual basis. Draker’s web enabled Sentalis Performance interface provides operators and maintenance crews from Soltage with the information they need to properly manage and maximize the yield of the solar installation. Public displays are also available on the web so that other people can get an understanding of how the system is performing and the way that it impacts Mazza’s carbon footprint.

With an approximate annual energy production of 300,000 kWh (which represents 50% to 60% of the energy demand from the facility) Mazza saves around $25,000 in their electric bill and offset 205 tons of C02.

Manufacturing Facility

Increased demand created higher energy costs for this manufacturing plant and they turned to solar energy as a way to reduce those costs over the long term. Draker Labs worked with Solar Monkey to deploy a data acquisition and monitoring platform to track performance. This site was a good fit for Draker’s capabilities as it required data to be aggregated from multiple buildings within the same facility. Our Sentalis web interface helps maintenance crews remotely pinpoint and troubleshoot anomalies within the data sets, and helps operators ensure that yield and system uptime are maximized. By leading as an example in its industry, this energy intensive manufacturing plant is estimated to save $420,000 each year on avoided electrical costs for the next 25 years while reducing their carbon footprint.

Pearl Brewery

The Pearl Brewery is a LEEDs certified building located in San Antonio, TX, with a roof-mounted PV system that supplies clean energy to the facility’s occupants. Installed by Meridian Solar, the PV system directs excess energy to the utility. Draker provides monitoring services that report on system performance and alert the system’s operators to potential maintenance issues. Draker also provides an interactive public-facing kiosk display that demonstrates the PV system’s real time performance through a graphical interface that incorporates visually intuitive animations of energy production.

Jacuzzi Family Vineyards

As part of its commitment to environmentally friendly business practices, Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, located in Sonoma, CA, installed two solar PV systems to supply power to its family-owned business and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Each system includes an identical number of solar panels and inverters from the same manufacturers, however, one system is fixed and the other is mounted on single axis trackers, permitting the panels to follow the path of the sun to maximize energy production. The two systems are rated at a total capacity of 124kW and produce 185,130 kWh on an annual basis, offsetting nearly 100 tons of harmful CO2 emissions. Draker provides a turnkey monitoring solution that allows the customer to compare and contrast the relative performance of the two unique PV technologies deployed by Jacuzzi.

REI Stores

7 Stores in CA
675 kW Total

In order to achieve maximum operational efficiency of REI solar power projects across different regions of California, Draker Laboratories was selected as the performance monitoring and data provider.

Draker’s Sentalis performance interface serves as a platform through which REI can maximize PV system performance, provide data interexchange with local utilities and federal or state agencies for performance based incentive acquisition. It will also help REI to communicate to their customers the commitments made in renewable energy and will help substantiate their stewardship reporting.

Draker's data collection and reporting services will also provide a valuable contribution for validating design assumptions and performance claims from manufactures over time. Maintenance crews from Blue Oak Energy obtain performance alarming with key indicators that will help them remotely troubleshoot and target their maintenance calls and reduce the cost of expensive truck rolls.

Lundberg Farms

Location: Richvale, CA
Capacity: 200kW
Partner: Stellar Energy

Draker Laboratories provides high performance monitoring to one of the world's largest solar powered rice dryers at Lundberg Family Farms. Monitoring of the 200 kW PV system has been in place since 2005.

Along with Draker's standard PV monitoring equipment, the company added an optional Net Energy package in order to closely monitor its investment, and realize the way in which energy flows to and from the utility grid. This additional functionality allows Lundberg Family Farms to take control of their load structure and perform peak shaving strategies which avoid peak-rate charges.

By shifting demand patterns, the company leaves room to export electricity during the times of the day when utilities pay the highest rates. This in turn maximizes the revenue opportunity from its investment, and increases the pace at which the investment pays for itself.

In order to deal with a large number of solar arrays, Lundberg Family Farms also found it valuable to add the DC Monitoring option that is available with our Sentalis systems. Additional break down of DC to AC efficiency is possible, and granular detail of array currents and voltages is accessible for pin-pointing problem areas of the system.

Barrick Gold Mines

Barrick Gold Corporation partnered with Stellar Energy Solutions to install a 1.3MW ground-mounted single axis tracker solar system that supplies energy to the company's mining operations. To ensure compliance with Nevada’s RPS requirements and federal renewable energy mandates, and to take advantage of state performance-based incentives, the company chose Draker to monitor its PV system. Draker's Sentalis 1000PV system allows Barrick to continuously acquire, monitor and manage critical performance data to ensure that the system is working to its full potential. When the monitoring system detects an anomaly, Stellar maintenance crews are immediately notified with real time alarms that help them to isolate and troubleshoot the problem and return the system to peak efficiency.