Hamerton Zoo Park

Solar Photo-Voltaic

Usually abbreviated to ‘solar p-v’ this system collects energy from sunlight and converts it into electricity via an inverter. A series of panels made from aluminium and plastic are linked together and positioned to make best use of the available sunlight. The three arrays at the Park produce a total of 54kw of power and are fixed to ground-mounted tables facing due south and angled at 30 degrees from the horizontal for optimum efficiency. Roof-mounted versions often have poorer performance if the roof has a different angle of slope, or has the wrong orientation.

Four banks of panels can be seen to the north of our over-flow car-parks and were installed in a part of the field which lies very wet in the winter, so is of little use, and are connected to the Park via the two sets of under-ground cables which took power from the original Gaia wind turbines. New cabling had to be installed for the Endurance turbines, so the solar panel arrays make use of the otherwise redundant infrastructure. These panels produce around 50,000 kW hours of electricity each year (around 30% of the production of just one turbine) which is fed directly into the Parks power supply.