We could all be under a Solar PV canopy, but some of us can be looking at the stars
While we might have mangled one of Oscar Wilde’s best known quotes, we thought it apt in the context of a fabulous structure that we have just finished installing for a very special client in Co. Cork.
The site in Crosshaven is looking directly across the harbour to the lovely town of Cobh and our 45 panel structure is powering this innovative passive house with clean, green electricity.
As you can see from the pictures, the site was very complicated. We had great help from the main contractors, Dave O’Callaghan builders, and from the architects, John Morehead and the team at WMA Architects, in Cork.
We would like to thank them and the clients for their trust in us and we wish them many happy ‘zero-carbon’ days in their soon-to-be new home.
The project itself was a c.10KW project, with 45 Solitek see-through panels in use. This means that the clients have all the benefits of a car canopy and of a solar PV array, but on pressclear starry nights they can still see the stars!
The structure is c.15m wide and c.5m deep. The see-through glass panels are laid out in three rows of 15. Each panel is sealed, so that the rainwater is collected into a gutter on the south end.
The project required us to match our upright sections to a series of pre-exsiting plinths and to look at adding in a number of additional measures due to the site’s fabulous marine location.
If you are walking along the loop walk up to Camden fort, our structure will be visible on your left hand side as you walk up. Hopefully it will add an interesting topic of conversation to all those walking chats, ideally how to mix cutting edge design and renewable energy deployments.
We would like to thank a few people in particular:
The client and homeowner, John Morehead, Fernando Gomez, Carlos Lidon Garcia from WMA, Dave O’Callaghan, John O’Callaghan and Peter and Pa from Dave O’Callaghan builders, Richard Leonard QS, Conor Coburn Engineer, Andrew Fitzsimons at FDA structural engineers, Philip Connolly Distribution, AMS architecture and metal systems, Solitek, the team at Solar Structures who worked on this project, Andrew, Ayman and Scott and perhaps more, a special thanks to Meave and Amaya for their patience and understanding.
If you have a project in mind, get in touch. We are Ireland’s provider of innovative structures for allowing Solar PV deployments to take place anywhere.
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