With the coming hurricane season, it is important now to think and plan ahead for the safe operation and maintenance of your property overall and specifically your PV system. Solar Island Energy has been a contributing author to the 2018 and 2019 authoritative publications on hurricane …
March 2020 Letter from the President
2019 Recap Looking at last year in the rearview, we aren’t sure whether to call it the year of the PV Carport or the year of the PV+Battery Microgrid. There have been several of both types of specialized projects, along with our bread and butter of commercial/industrial rooftop PV and utility PV …
Hurricane Survivability Recommendations
The 2017 hurricane season demonstrated that many solar projects in the Caribbean are not engineered and constructed with sufficient survivability. Forensic investigations have shown that even basic wind codes were not observed in many cases, resulting in widespread failures. In 2018, we …
Solar Modules – Why Do Tilt And Orientation Matter?
Here are two basic engineering question that apply to most solar projects. At what tilt should the modules be mounted? Should the orientation be “portrait” or “landscape”? Getting the answers right should be part of every design engineer’s Quality Assurance process. They also are …
Microgrid Simulation and Design for Private Islands
Sizing the energy production and storage components of a microgrid makes a big difference in the performance of the system – both financially and from the perspective of keeping the lights on. A microgrid almost always includes traditional fossil-fuel generation, such as a diesel genset. What’s …