Sydney-headquartered solar racking systems company S-Rack Australia has partnered with Victorian commercial clean energy solutions company Energy Aware to retrofit a DHL logistics hub in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW) with a solar rooftop carport.
Located on top of a multi-storey carpark in Matraville, the 42-car space carport uses 267 solar modules to generate 130 kWdc capacity to supply DHL’s operations at its eastern Sydney facility.
S-Rack General Manager Liam Turner told pv magazine installing a solar powered carport onto an existing operational multi-storey carpark comes with its challenges.
“Energy Aware ensured seamless operations allowing our team to deliver this project on time and on budget,” Turner said.
Factoring in that the carpark was both functional and elevated meant combating distribution challenges with heavy machinery, including the planned use of a crane, but construction was completed in two weeks once on the jobsite.
Energy Aware Managing Director Nick Burrows told pv magazine there’s much planning and detail that goes into a successful installation.
“S-Rack jumped in and worked with our team seamlessly through this process. This resulted in them executing the installation aspect of this project according to plans,” Burrows said.
Key challenges included liaising with the original engineer of the building to ensure the carport design did not undermine the carpark’s structural integrity.
Council approvals were streamlined with the assistance of meticulous drawings.
Given the elevated carpark was in use during construction, traffic management was essential to guarantee minimal disruption to the general public.
The 130 kW system was made up of 500 W Trina Solar panels, and the system employs Sungrow 110 kW and Sungrow 30 kW inverters (SG11CX and SG30CX), with the carport now set to generate 200,000 kWh of renewable energy in 2025.
As a fixed system, the carport design required careful positioning to maximise generation through the best alignment of the panels.
“To obtain maximum generation, panels were installed on a fixed tilt of 5 degrees facing northwest for optimum solar generation,” Burrows said.
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