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Pionieerspark Medical Centre can call themselves a proud owner of a 38kW photovoltaic grid feed system. Considerable savings on the monthly electricity bill are achieved as most of the electricity requirements are produced directly at the customer. Excess energy is fed back into the grid and credited on the monthly electricity bill by City of Windhoek.

The system consists of 144 265W PV modules mounted flat on the roof of the building with 2 Fronius three phase grid feed inverters and remote monitoring via the Fronius App on the cell phone. Remote monitoring allows CTS to advise the client on possible faults and recommended actions to be taken.

Ministry of Agriculture through, through SASSCAL funding, did acquire 3 automatic weather stations in 2018 which where finally installed in 2019 after sites have been determined. These stations from part of the existing SASSCAL weather station network that has been established over the past years. All stations conform to SASSCAL requirements and are inline with WMO standards.

The stations are installed at :

• Dudukabe (Zambezi)
• Okalongo (Ohangwena)
• Omafo (Ohangwena)

Station info can be obtained from www.sasscalweathernet.org

Central Technical Supplies was approached by the University of Stellenbosch to take part in a tender to supply a solar resource measurement station to the Namibia University of Science and Technology in Windhoek.

We were successful in winning the tender. The station is based on the Kipp and Zonen Solys 2 sun tracker with CMP 10 Pyranometer and CHP1 Pyrheliometer.

The station is based on the CR1000 logger from Campbell Scientific and measures wind speed and direction as well as ambient temperature, humidity and rain in addition to the solar resource data.

CTS has supplied 21 weather stations for the Biota research project. These weather stations are designed according to world meteorological standard.

Each station consists of:

• Wind Speed and Direction Sensor
• Irradiance Sensor
• Humidity/Ambient Temperature Sensor
• Barometric Pressure Sensor
• Ground Temperature Sensor
• Leaf Wetness Sensor
• Rain Bucket

The weather stations are equipment with the CR1000 logger from Campbell Scientific. Special software has been developed to allow automatic transmission of the weather data to a server based in Germany via GPRS using the local GSM network. Software updates can be done remotely minimizing travel.

Weather data can be viewed at: www.sasscalweathernet.org 

The installed photovoltaic system at Elavi Clinic caters for the power supply to the clinic as well as the nurse houses. A 6.2kW PV module array generates enough power for the energy requirements. Should this not be sufficient the batteries can be charged by a backup generator.

The system consists of the following:

• 6.24 kW PV array
• 2x Victron BueSolar 150V/70A MPPT regulator
• 600Ah Battery capacity
• Inverter/Charger, Victron Multi, 48V/8000VA
• System Monitoring (BMV700, Color Control GX)

After successful completion of the Omusati off grid electrification project, CTS was successful in winning the bid for the second phase of containerized PV solutions for the Kunene region. With the experience gained from phase 1, the containers were optimized in many ways. The final design consisted custom build 20ft container by Namspace in Swakopmund.

Sites that were electrified in the Kunene region are:

• Otjitjekua School
• Otjiu School
• Otjiu Hostel
• Epupa School

The project included the following:

• Upgrading of all government building wiring as per national standard for 4 sites in the Kunene region:
• Manufacture, supply and install container power units for these sites.

The power containers consisted of ca 2.8kW of PV modules installed on the roof as well as 4,500 Ah of battery capacity. Five kVA inverter charger and two 70A BlueSolar Charge regulator all from Victron Energy complete the system. Remote monitoring of all sites is achieved by using the Victron Color Control GX unit.