At the recent annual African Victron distributor meeting held in Johannesburg, South Africa, installer James Davy of Solar by Design and his Victron distributor Chris Hulley One Stop Solar stepped onto the podium to describe a huge installation recently completed for a nature reserve in Zimbabwe – the Bubye Valley Conservancy.
The large, carefully designed, and immaculately installed containerised system was voted Best installation in Africa 2024 .
The achievement also happens to fulfil one of James Davy’s long-held ambitions – to build a system featuring the maximum power-output by parallel-installed Quattro inverter chargers – 144kW/180kVA – from four sets of 3 x 15kVA units, parallel connected!
Bubye Valley Conservancy Towla Headquaters occupies 3760 square km of land and is the second biggest conservancy in Africa. It is home to the greatest lion population and has a very important black and white rhino herd.
This system powers the conservancy headquarters – it runs their workshops, their butchery, cold rooms, as well as providing electricity to staff housing and the guest lodge accommodation.
Until now the conservancy relied on a 150kVA diesel generator as their primary power source, patching in for a very unreliable electricity grid. The generator typically ran from 6am to 9pm everyday – which was very expensive not only for the fuel, but also the cost of maintenance, spare parts and related expenses.
The location is extremely hot – often reaching 50C in summer – and with no overnight power, there were no fans, air conditioning, lights, or refrigeration …just darkness and stifling heat. By day there was the constant din from the generator. It was time to do something about it…
One of the greatest challenges for installer James Davy was simply the logistics of getting all devices to site even before work could begin.
The system was the largest Victron installation in Zimbabwe when built and comprises:
430 x Jinko 555 W solar panels offering 240 kWP
496 kWH BYD LVL Battery storage
12 x 15 kVA Quattro Inverter Chargers
9 x 450/200 MPPT RS solar charge controllers
5 x Fronius Eco 27 kVA solar inverters
A Cerbo GX communication centre allows all installed devices to talk to each other – harmonising the system as well as offering local and remote engineering access. On site access for monitoring and programming is made available by a GX Touch 70 touch screen user interface.
Remote engineering access is available via the free-to-use Victron Remote Management (VRM) platform which is a boon when monitoring remote installations. Full engineering access, together with historic data for analysis and remote firmware updating can be implemented from anywhere in the world.
James says he appreciates the support of his Victron distributor One Stop Solar who immediately resolved an issue with two devices by replacing them from stock without inspection delays.
James Davy says: “It was hard work, but the finished product is very neat and works very well. The client is extremely happy and as a result of their transformative Victron experience they have chosen to standardise the use of Victron throughout the entire conservancy. We’re installing 59 small Victron systems to power their fence, as well as two 45 kVA three-phase Systems and a 30 kVA three-phase system. We’ve also provided 15 portable power system for their scouts and rangers.
“At their instruction, we are in the process of replacing all previous power equipment with Victron devices.“
Speaking about the new award ceremony, Victron Sales Manager David Alsina says:
From a total of 27 candidate-installations ranging in size from 10 kVA to 180 kVA, and located in South Africa Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we selected a top three – based not only the size, but also technical solutions, type of site, location, etc. The three finalists were given a time slot of 5 minutes and three slides to present their systems to attendees of the distributor’s meeting who then voted, producing this worthy winner. The prize for both winners was a professional infra-red camera which can be used to help diagnose sources of overheating.
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