Floating PV powering sieving machines, suction excavators at German quarry

• Rheinland Solar has constructed a 750 kW floating solar plant to power several sieving makers as well as suction excavators at a quarry in Germany. On weekends, the excess electricity is offered to the grid at market prices.

Rheinland Solar has installed a 750 kW floating PV system on a quarry near Weeze, Germany. The project covers a huge portion of the yearly power needs of Hülskens, which runs a close-by sand as well as crushed rock manufacturing facility.

Hülskens created the floating foundations for the project, as the group additionally has subsidiaries that focus on hydraulic engineering, logistics, and also concrete building.

The main part of the bases, which will certainly work as a prototype for other floating planetary systems, are made of steel. Each one can support 1,872 solar modules. Rheinland Solar utilized half-cell Suntech modules.

Hülskens Project Manager Lutz van der Kuil stated the team will construct comparable projects in the future.

" We will certainly take a close consider just how much electricity the system produces and just how much of it we can use in the crushed rock plant," he said. "If whatever goes as prepared, we will certainly gear up other websites with floating solar in the future."

The 750 kW system is expected to produce around 637,500 kWh of power annually. Around 75% of the power will be consumed on site.

Rheinland Solar claimed the gravel plant has an electrical power intake of around 1.3 million kWh per year. The majority of the power generated throughout the week will be used to run suction excavators and also evaluating makers at the website. On the weekends, the electrical power will certainly be fed into the grid. Rheinland Solar believes it will certainly be able to recoup its investment within six years.

A variety of other floating PV systems are currently being planned at crushed rock quarries in Germany. Gas provider Erdgas Südwest, for instance, recently stated it would certainly build 1.5 MW of floating PV capacity at a site in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.