Enphase Energy installation in Queensland

Wondai Electrical Services has installed a 5 kW solar array which uses the Enphase Microinverter System to power its industrial offices, training room and combined electrical warehouse and workshop in Queensland.

Taking full advantage of solar’s many benefits, Wondai Electrical Service decided to transform its business into a greener outlet. Having already shifted the buildings’ air conditioning and HWS to a more economical tariff, Wondai Electrical hoped to achieve financial savings by exporting energy through an approved IES agreement on solar power.

Working with Ergon Energy to receive IES approval, Wondai Electrical was granted a 5 kW array designed with European string inverters. However, prior to installation, the site’s solar accredited staff were introduced and trained with a new type of solar technology recently made available in Australia: the Enphase System.

Convinced that the microinverter’s easy installation, high safety rate and maximum harvest capability were better suited for the project, Wondai Electrical Service switched its original design to Enphase, making its array the first Enphase installation in Queensland.

“After learning about the Enphase System and being trained with its technology, the decision to use microinverters was obvious,” said Owen Blamires, managing director of Wondai Electrical Service. “The process of communicating between individual module inverters through the Envoy Communications Gateway to a cloud-based web platform was so simple to comprehend it almost seemed too good to be true.”

The remote monitoring capabilities of Enlighten also allowed Wondai Electrical to provide potential solar customers with accurate and detailed data about their system’s progress via the internet.

“By switching to Enphase, we were given an alternative option to the traditional inverter that enabled real-time monitoring and analysis for each individual module,” added Blamires.

The Enphase Microinverter System is claimed to provide a new approach to the installation, operation and maintenance of solar energy systems. It allows each module the capability to harvest power individually, bringing production losses to a minimum. Enphase Microinverters, the Envoy Communications Gateway and Enlighten web-based monitoring and analysis software work together to deliver good energy harvest and solar system intelligence.

By converting direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) at the panel level, microinverters create independent power producers out of every single panel in a solar array. This simplifies solar system design and installation while also eliminating high-voltage DC. Enphase’s web-based Enlighten software comes included with the Enphase Microinverter System and communicates with each microinverter over the existing power lines. Enlighten allows remote access to system information from any web-enabled device, providing installers with increased visibility into the performance of their installed-base and remote troubleshooting capabilities.

“We are thrilled about the adoption of Enphase microinverters in Queensland and the opportunity to introduce our system’s reliability, efficiency and remote monitoring benefits to Wondai Electrical Service,” said Russell French, sales director for Enphase Energy in Australia.