Oct 2018

Contents

• Water Generator Project
• Orphanage Solar Project
• Home Solar Project
• Hospital Solar Project
• Water Filter Project

Hospital Solar Project

INTRODUCTION

“Rashidabad”, a pilot project of “Rashid Memorial Welfare Organization” was founded in the memory of Flight Lieutenant Rashid Ahmed Khan, who embraced ‘Shahadat’ on 13^thDecember 1997. This society is in Sindh, 30 KM from Hyderabad towards MirpurKhas and is stretched over 100 acres. Its foundation stone was laid on 13^thDecember 1998. The vision of the Rashidabad society is to provide healthcare and education to the unprivileged population of Pakistan.

The mission of the Rashidabad society is to focus on eliminating illiteracy and alleviating poverty from the country. It encompasses all four elements of a sustainable society:

• Education
• Health
• Environment
• Socio-economics

A trip to Rashidabad was planned on Monday, 1^st October, 2018. The objective of the trip was as follows:

1. To install Battery-Monitor
2. To install IoTa Watt
3. To increase load

SOLAR PLANT AT RASHIDABAD

In the vast society of Rashidabad, “Bilquis Mushaf Hospital” was selected for the Solar panel installation. The project team analyzed the load requirement for the building by physically visiting the premises and collecting relevant data.  As a result of the working, the energy requirements of the hospital were calculated as below:

• The total load requirement of the hospital in summer per day: 200 KWh
• The total load requirement of the hospital in winter per day: 50 KWh

The project was completed in September 2017 with the installment of solar panels on the roof of the building which had 8,900 sq. ft space available for solar panel installation. The system set-up included the following:

• Thirty-Six (36) Solar Panels (300W each) from Canadian Solar to be set-up on the roof of the hospital
• Three (3) Charge Controllers FLEX Max 80 from Outback Power for charging the batteries using solar power
• Twenty-Four (24) 2V, 800Ah, rechargeable batteries to store energy
• One (1) 7kVA DC to Ac inverter to draw power from the batteries and the run the building
• One (1) Mate-3 System Controller from Outback Power
• One (1) Hub-4 from Outback Power as communicator to enable data collection, system performance and web reporting
• Three (3) breakers (one covering 12 panels) to prevent system from damaging in case of fault
• Two (2) breakers installed on the input and output of Inverters
• One (1) PTCL Char-Ji Evo device to provide internet connection to Hub-4 and Mate-3 for communication

THE ENTIRE SYSTEM

The Solar Panel project has been designed and installed after analyzing quotes from several vendors, the products to be used, and the techniques to be adopted. Focus was kept on maintaining quality while staying within the allocated budget. After great teamwork, the basis of this project was finalized.

Below are the details of  the system installed:

• SOLAR PANELS 

Thirty-Six (36), Poly-Crystalline Solar Panels from Canadian Solar are installed on the roof in South-West direction to achieve the best efficiency rate. Each panel is of 300 W with 36.1 V as Optimum Operating Voltage and 8.30 A as Optimum Operating Current. The panels are divided in 3 strings with each consisting of 12 panels. Each string is further sub-divided in four parts (each with 3 panels). Three parts are connected in series with the fourth one connected in parallel. This leads to a total voltage generation of 108.3 V from the Solar panels.

The Solar panel wiring from the roof to the building could not be left open nor can plastic coverings be used as it can get damaged if stones or such material is thrown or falls on top accidentally. In order to avoid this issue, metal coverings were used on the roof where as plastic coverings are used within the building.

The Solar panels were to be set-up in an adjustable manner so that their angles may be changed with convenience according to seasonal requirements in order to avail the best efficiency.

As per the team’s observation, the vendor tried to make the setting adjustable but couldn’t achieve it. Therefore,as for now, to adjust the panels to the desired angle, a workforce of 4-5 people is required which is neither suitable nor safe.

The team believes that the task would have been achieved if the complete string of 12 panels were made adjustable with a single pivot rather than making every panel adjustable independently.

• CHARGE CONTROLLER

Three (3) FLEX max 80, MPPT type Charge Controllers are installed that manage the power going into the battery bank from the solar array. They ensure that the deep cycle batteries are not overcharged during the day, and that power doesn’t run backwards to the solar panels overnight to drain the batteries.

They offer three modes of control:Bulk,Absorption and Float. Bulk mode works when the battery is drained to about 50-60%. The Absorption mode works when the battery is charged to about 90% and the Float mode runs when the battery is almost charged that is 98-100%.

Charge Controller is also known as Boost Controller and acts as a step-down transformer as it step-downs the 108.3 V from the Solar panels to an approximate value of 52 V so that it can be stored into the batteries which have a total capacity of 48 V (mentioned under the heading of “Batteries”). This stepping down of voltage is achieved by increasing the current simultaneously.

• BATTERIES

Twenty-Four (24) VISION CLS-800 valve regulated rechargeable batteries of 2 V, 800 Ah are set-up in series connected mode such that they can store a total voltage of 48 Volts. As mentioned above in Charge Controllers, the step-down voltage from charge controllers are stored in these batteries and from here, are provided to the invertor.

• INVERTER

GS7048E Single phase 230 Vac 50-60Hz Utility-interactive sine wave Inverter/ Charger with AC transfer switch is installed. It is designed for FLEX Grid operations. The purpose of this inverter is to convert the DC Voltage from batteries to AC voltage and utilize is to power the loads in hospital.

• MATE 3

OutBack Power’s new MATE3 display and controller offers advanced features for monitoring and controlling the OutBack Power system.  It also helps to remotely manage and monitor multiple inverter/ chargers, and DC monitoring devices with a well-designed controller.  The MATE3 intuitive user interface andintegrated system configuration wizard make programming and setup simple and straightforward. 

• HUB 4

TheHub-4 communicator connects the system at a single junction. It acquires the data from the Charge controllers and the power being transferred throughout the system. With the help of RJ-45 Jack, the communicator connects to internet and further transfer the details to Mate-3 for displaying the gathered information.

ACTIVITIES PERFORMED

• INSTALLATION OF BATTERY MONITOR

Battery Monitor also called as “DC Monitor” can display voltage, charge and discharge current, consumed amp hours, remaining battery capacity, temperature and the time remaining of the battery bank and displays the voltage of an auxiliary battery.With all this data being displayed, one can also estimate the battery life by comparing the rate of charge and discharge over a period.

The installation of battery monitor was a time-consuming task as we could not connect the complete    bus-bar to it due to the fear of getting the monitor damaged. Thus, a practical and more suitable way to prevent any mishap was to connect shunts in between the bus-bar and the monitor. For this connection, we were guided by Sir Jawad Akhtar who provided us a sketch (mentioned below). Then came across the wire issue as the bus-bar was having three connected wires which were short circuited and provided to the shunt as a single path. For this, we could not use the same gauge wire as used on bus-bar. This issue was a major one as providing three-times current to the same wire would have burnt it. Therefore, the best solution was to use a three-times (3X) gauge wire to that on bus-bar. Unfortunately, we could only find a twice-gauge wire, so we used it to run the battery monitor and test it.However, the staff at the Hospital has been informed not to burden up the loadunless proper wiring is done until our next visit.

Figuring out all these issues, we worked according to the provided sketch for connection making, the shunts were connected, and the monitor was finally installed.

• INSTALLATION OF IoTa WATT

Another objective was the installation of IoTa watt. This was a necessary step as Mate-3 was acquiring the data but in case of “No Internet Connection”, the data would’ve been lost, and therefore disturbing the graphical representations. IoTa Watt provides the facility which can overcome this issue as IoTa watt can store the data to itself and later update it on the server once it reconnects to the internet. Therefore, IoTa Watt was to be installed. Unfortunately, due to lack of time, this task was performed by Jawwad and Imran, the next morning.

• LOAD INCREMENT

Since the system was not working at its best, as less load was connected on Solar,therefore, to bring out the best, the load was to be increased. At first, two dialysis machines were selected to be converted on Solar. The test was underway when the hospital authority disapproved this conversion citing the reason that the machines were much critical to be made part of any kind of testing. Hence, Heat Incubators were finalized to be converted on Solar. Again, due to lack of time,this task was completed the next day by the above mentioned personnel.  

• ALARM

As the load on Solar was increased, a smacking down situation would have appeared when the load exceeds the maximum limit, thus, damaging the system. To prevent this, an alarm was connected which would ring on excessive load, making the staff aware of the overloading situation. To perform this task,the AC-wire from the inverter was connected to a Current Transformer (CT) to lower down the current value and then was provided to the alarm. A limit was set on this alarm so that it only rings when the limit is breached.