I was at Olivedale hospital recently. It's hard to not notice how much solar they have. I'm betting they haven't got a bank of parallelled Axperts. 

What sort of inverters and storage are used for sites this size? 

my guess would be SMA or Fronius most probably, i have my doubts they have storage on a system like this, the cost would be astranomical. I did read an article on a mine that used grid tied solar coupled with a generator to reduce diesel costs so i would imagine they could do that during load shedding... Just a guess.

Let me do some research.

 

Edited September 4, 20215 yr by Basil Katakuzinos

PV Rooftop Netcare Hospital, Olivedale, Johannesburg - LeadEPC

Looks like a purely grid tied system.

Quote

• Design, Supply and Installation of 396,9kWp Rooftop System
• 1260 x Jinko 315Wp Panels
• 6 x SMA STP 20 000 Inverters
• 11 x SMA STP 25 000 Inverters

 

1 hour ago, Basil Katakuzinos said:

my guess would be SMA or Fronius most probably, i have my doubts they have storage on a system like this, the cost would be astranomical. I did read an article on a mine that used grid tied solar coupled with a generator to reduce diesel costs so i would imagine they could do that during load shedding... Just a guess.

Let me do some research.

 

This makes sense. I used to work for Netcare and back then all the hospitals had serious diesel generators (see a post of mine elsewhere on this forum about back up power abuse) 

3 minutes ago, Bobster said:

This makes sense. I used to work for Netcare and back then all the hospitals had serious diesel generators (see a post of mine elsewhere on this forum about back up power abuse) 

Have been to a small data center that had 3 massive CAT generators and an entire room of lead acid batteries for inverters that where used while the cats started up. They had a contract to recieve a tanker of fuel PER DAY, i can only imagine how expensive that becomes.

Edited September 4, 20215 yr by Basil Katakuzinos

Would be interested to see how well grid tied PV and generators work together, i would not be suprised if the SMA Grid tied anti islanding becomes problematic connected to a generator. Is it something officially supported by any Grid tied inverter manufacturers.

1 minute ago, Basil Katakuzinos said:

Would be interested to see how well grid tied PV and generators work together, i would not be suprised if the SMA Grid tied anti islanding becomes problematic connected to a generator. Is it something officially supported by any Grid tied inverter manufacturers.

Well a hospital has to have power 24/365 for theatres and ICU. So they must have generators or storage. 

Well it looks like it is supported and from what i can see only by SMA
What Is a Photovoltaic Diesel Hybrid System? - Sunny. SMA Corporate Blog (sma-sunny.com)

Thats pretty cool, 

so for every 1MW of installed generator capacity 600Kwp of solar can be utelised.

Just now, Bobster said:

Well a hospital has to have power 24/365 for theatres and ICU. So they must have generators or storage. 

As i said above, i think storage would be wayyy to expensive on such a large scale.

2 minutes ago, Basil Katakuzinos said:

As i said above, i think storage would be wayyy to expensive on such a large scale.

I'm sure. But they have a 400kw array, so at midday today they had lots of power to do something with.

I worked for them years ago. Hospitals are resilient institutions. You were wondering earlier about diesel costs. I recall that for Y2K they had two hospitals in Jhb set up to go 3 days with no municipal services. This included converting swimming pools to diesel tanks and having tankers full of diesel already paid for and on stand by, plus big ass water reservoirs. 

The idea was that if services at other hospitals failed the patients would be evacuated to one of these beefed up hospitals.

13 hours ago, 87 Dream said:

Hospitals especially the Netcare group make huge profits and turnovers. In the economics of it, this is small change & adds to business security & confidence. 

Sir! They are concerned only about the welfare of their patients. Nothing more. To suggest they have a profit motive will achieve nothing beyond getting Discovery Health worked up.

A business, for profit. Nothing else matters, profit. Or they would not be in business, nor listed.

Yes, it is a business like any other one and is intended to make profits but keeping a private hospital compliant to government regulations to which they themselves do not adhere to is unbelievable expensive. Rather look at the companies supplying equipment especially life support equipment and the breakages due to negligence from nursing staff is unreal. Just 3 temp probes, 6 SPO2 probes and a few cables adds up to 67k and that is in one week in one ward and not even specialised equipment. People only see the basics when visiting a hospital but believe me there is more to it behind the scenes. Currently to build a new private hospital the cost is between 2 and 3 bar per bed everything included. 

 

Making of a HUGE profit then is mandatory, or else there will be no private service at all. Exactly to my point.

16 hours ago, 87 Dream said:

I have worked at one particular medical institution under their banner & it is in my opinion that Netcare are in no way struggling...Only in my opinion 🤣

Sorry. I forgot to turn on the sarcasm font.

Just now, Bobster said:

Sorry. I forgot to turn on the sarcasm font.

There's a sarcasm font?

 

Just now, PaulinNorthcliff said:

There's a sarcasm font?

 

Don't you start Paul 🤣😙