Canyon Solar installs 250 kW modular PV canopy overnight in Australia

Modular PV manufacturer Canyon Solar has successfully installed 250 kWp of solar in a single night as part of a three-week build at a shopping center in northeastern Australia.

From pv magazine Australia

Canyon Solar has completed its fastest project delivery to date with the installation of a 250 kW prefabricated solar shade structure in the carpark of the Warner Marketplace shopping center in Brisbane, Australia.

Sydney-based Canyon Solar said the project, delivered in partnership with Smart Commercial Solar and Woolworths, involved the installation of 36 prefabricated pods over 78 car spaces with the entire build taking three weeks to complete, start to finish.

The modular solar pods were mounted on 11 columns with screw pier foundations, some extending up to 9 meters deep due to poor ground conditions. The structure also has provision for electric vehicle DC fast chargers, is fully waterproof and has integrated lighting.

Canyon founder and Chief Executive Officer Will Beaumont said strict requirements to minimize the impact of the construction works prompted the decision to crane in the high-span pods – the largest of which spans 14.7 meters – at night to minimize the disruption and expedite the build program.

“The only feasible way of doing this without shutting down the car park was to do it overnight,” he said, adding that it had taken about one month of planning to prepare for the night works. “We needed approval from the shopping center management, detailed construction management plan and all of the safety and logistics planning of delivering five semi-trailer loads of solar pods staged over the night,” he said. “This also involved two crane crews, one crew for the 60 tonne mobile crane and one crew for the [25 metric ton] franna [crane].”

Beaumont said it was the first time Canyon Solar has trialed night work to crane in pods and it worked “an absolute treat … This was a major milestone project for us as it finally validated our key hypothesis. A prefabricated solar canopy is fast and lower cost than competing in-situ systems that can easily take three months to build something this size.”

The company said the benefits of prefabricated solar canopies are increasingly being recognized by customers, with the company having installed close to 2 MWp since completing its first commercial project two years ago. It also has 1.5 MWp of projects in the pipeline.

“If you want shade and installed solar capacity it is now a no-brainer to combine these two into a solar canopy,” Beaumont said, adding that the prefabricated system can be installed at least three times faster than traditional systems and outcompetes rooftop solar on a dollar-per-watt basis.

“Overall our system is cost competitive with the cost of installing an equivalent sized shade cloth and roof-top solar,” he said. “Moreover, unlike shade cloth our solar canopy is fully waterproof, has a design life of 30 years, double that of shade cloth and shows a commitment to sustainability that shoppers can actually see.”