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so a quick disclaimer before we before we begin this presentation cannot be considered as any replacement for any of the standards that I do reference here reasonable care has been taken to into the accuracy of the information it's at the time that the presentation was made and please do refer back to any of the standards if you do have any questions see what electronic limited any of our agents distributors we accept no responsibility for any emissions of the presentation or misinterpretations by you the user and if you need any clarification please do contact me directly this is not a form of contract of training and also anyone performing the electrical test that I described within the presentation must be fully competent to do so um so see a group and see what electronic limited rather were established in the early 1980s and we have an established and long-running lawn long running history in the portable appliance testing business we also operate in several other sectors such as the bio medical industry where we help health professionals and and biomedical engineers to ensure the safety of their their concerns and then we also work in the manufacturing arena where we where we made production line safety testers high pot testers we also have a renewable range and that's what I head up part of our renewable range here is our PV 150 on the Left our PV 210 and our sole utility Pro and the reason I show this slide arm right away is just that there should be a sense that we need the right tool for the job here so if we go to site with a traditional multimeter maybe wouldn't have the either features or the voltage rating or the current rating per need so it's very important for us to use solar specific tools and we're going to cover these in more detail throughout the presentation but overall products aside you know the number one thing we need to concern ourselves with across all of this is your safety and your colleagues safety and any obviously visitors with you their safety tube that is absolutely paramount I think a lot of people had a new into the solar industry in particular maybe they've worked in commercial electrical contracting work in the past maybe in building work maybe even properties in residential work but this needs to be it needs to be understood that solar power plant is very different it is an active power plant as the name suggests and the electrical dangers are are much greater the north in a domestic property so we need to treat it with respect so with that in mind your first defense absolutely should be rubber insulated gloves you should cover these with leather gloves make sure you inspect them prior to every use personal protection equipment is also very important don't underestimate this DC arcs can be very big and they can be very dangerous particularly when we're dealing with the voltages up to 1500 volt and testing multiple strains in a combiner box may be that 32 amp fuse harness that's that's a lot of power right there and as engineers or as PV technicians or electricians whatever we may be when we go back to these legacy systems and we're asked to work on them we often have very strict deadlines but also we have very little information it's this double whammy so not all PV systems are clearly clearly labeled so you need to be aware of what you're connecting to prior to beginning your testing work and we're going to cover that a little bit more detail that's an important point we also need to ensure that you have some on-site evaluations prior to carry out any maintenance work and when I say on-site evaluations that's that's not pre testing preparation in the technical sense it's more just checking all of your gear and you get to a job when you think okay well I thought I had enough but actually this this job is is of a lot higher risk factor to myself and my colleagues we're going to need some additional PPE so you may need a higher category of PPE especially if you then have to work in an inverter or verifying voltages and switch gear that's when you need to maybe look for the arc flash suit so with that in mind we need to start our pre testing preparation and we can start this usually back in the office okay so it's best that we do this before we get to site so everything I'm going to describe here in this this kind of first section of the pre testing preparation we should really do before we go to site we don't want to waste time when we get there because obviously that's when we're getting paid to do the job or that's when we are paying someone to do the job so it's best to arrive to site pre-prepared so with your instrument if if you're taking an instrument with you whatever it may be make sure that it is performing correctly maybe check the continuity of the cables make sure you've got spare batteries make sure you have all the cables that's also something I've seen people have left cables behind so we just need to make sure all of our equipment is is ready to go and that is the very bare minimum of the pre testing preparation with the kit then we also need to consider the environment that we're going to work in in our pre testing preparation so we need to understand why are we going into a cold environment are we going into a very hot environment so here I picked a very extreme example this is the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum solar farm is I think in South Devon and we were out there and these are thin film modules and it was very very very hot so to prepare for this project we think ok well where is our test site going to be okay so you can see by the picture we're gonna be testing behind the panels so we do have some shade however the site is so massive getting to that point we have to drive in the vehicle and what we don't want to do is leave our bag of tools in the flatbed of the vehicle we should keep them in the air-conditioned environment so as well as thinking is my tool readied arrived my cables also thinking how am I going to treat my tool when I get to that environment similarly if you're in a very cold environment there can be condensation just need to be aware of that and make sure that's not affecting any of the electronics so I'm you know keep the keep the instrument well insulated just jumping back to very hot environments one thing we did think think we could do if the temperatures were being so extreme you know upwards of 4550 degrees celsius 104 Fahrenheit then we would pull the vehicle next to where the cables were and then we would be able to to do the testing from the AC call vehicle so we've checked all of our instrumentation we're making sure that it's it's operating correctly I also have a vision in my mind of where I'm going to test how I'm going to treat my instrument you know I'm considering the environment greatly and also that what I failed to mention was the weather which we'll come to later but we should also consider what the weather is going to be but now we're actually on site okay so we're there we've found we've passed the gate of the of the system we we've gone in we've signed a security book we had the health and safety briefing we're now ready to head out into sight but simile everything I mentioned could could apply to a residential or a commercial system so we first thing we do we run to the combiner box we plug in the meter when we hit test well no that's absolutely not what we do what we do is a visual inspection real easy just pick let's keep it simple so walk up and down the front of the table that you're going to test and just look for anything obvious so here you can see in this site in Dubai we have a big crack in one of the thin film modules and interestingly this was caused by the when we're trying to clean the pad and the the the the machine the JCB that had the brush it wasn't JCB was a John Deere actually but it was brushing the panels and it kicked up a stone and hit hit the hit the bottom panel so so now I'm thinking okay well I need to make a note of this string because when I come to test it I'm gonna see a problem and you might think oh that's obvious but it's not obvious when you're behind the panel's and that string you're testing is 150 meters down towards the the cabin so it's always very important to perform this visual inspection another thing to know here with the visual inspection immediately you can see that the strings are shaded by the dust and the the sand that's there in the middle of the desert everyone thinks desert environments are great for solar but they're very dusty they're very hot Solar likes temperate climates and we get this problem where they get this just you we call this uniform shading where we have a one uniform layer of dust and what this is gonna do is it'll bring down the short-circuit current and the current overall because we're losing irradiance it's literally being shaded it's like a thin blanket laid over the top of the panel's secondly it's also going to increase the temperature and that will make the voltage lessen also so it'll drag down performance so I'm expecting to see this when I run my tests so we don't have a visual inspection of the front of the array I'm going to then go behind the array and I'm gonna do the same thing pretty much but I'm looking for some slightly different things so I'm looking at the mc4 connections or the Sun clicks or the Tyco or whatever they may be and I'm just checking for any kind of for one of a better word melted connections so this is when we have maybe having crimped the mc4 carefully enough inside and there's been some arcing from DC arcing there or perhaps there has been some water ingress in the not likely in the desert I will grant you but looking at this picture of the cables on the right hand side you can see that the position of the cables if it was to rain the war that would run directly down the cable into the MC for connection and again this could cause us future problems and of course these module these cables would be swinging in the wind and that's going to cause us further problems also so we're looking for this so immediately I'm thinking okay I've got a crack on the front I have dusted shaded panels I have cables that are hanging down and not tied up correctly so this is the real this is a real doozy of an environment we're dealing with here and again not so much in the desert although there are some small mammals in the desert but small mammals such as rodents squirrels large mammals also they like to chew solid DC cable the the insulation of the cable is made from a soybean derivative so it's very sweet to them so they truly - they chew and I'm sure as some of you out there have seen a dead squirrel or two underneath the panel and again that can cause insulation thoughts and ground faults so that's what we're looking out for that with our visual inspection oh yeah I think it is a John Deere yeah what's the John Deere I know it's green anyway John D is green but the purpose of this slide is to say we really should clean the modules prior to testing so so once we saw that the modules were dusty and that was going to affect our readings overall we requested that the cleaning crews come out and clean the panels prior to us testing them this was super important because there was just there was such a layer of dust on the panels it would be really hard to get good good accurate readings so we asked for these to be cleaned which is incredibly difficult you'd imagine as you'd imagine in the desert because we don't have any water to use and also we're just dry basically dry brushing the dust off and you can see from this slide we did make some progress although there is still some layers of dust there and this is what we now call not uniform shading but spotted shading where we have patches of dust that's gonna affect the output of the panel but a really interesting thing at this point is you could test actually before the panels are cleaned and then test them afterwards and we can compare the IV curve of those two and this is a great commercial but you need to tie clients into cleaning contracts so an interesting side point there so just to quickly recap where we're at so far we've tested our equipment we're making sure that it's all working correctly we've looked at our upcoming environment and we've thought about our test processes we maybe even wrote written down apologies a test process that we can use when we get to site we've then done some pre-testing preparation on site so we've done a visual inspection of the modules working for cracks looking for shading with end an inspection of the back of the panels and we're looking at the cabling we're looking for arcs we're looking for water ingress we're looking for naughty small animals that are chewing cables and then we've said okay well hey mister you please clean these for me so this is the position we're at right now but what if we can't clean okay this is a really big issue I've found in the field and with a lot of soul professionals out there is that Michael that's all well and good you telling me just get your clean and clear out but I'm on my own here in the middle of a farm had how the heck am I supposed to clean all of these panels well I kind of figured out not a 100% proof accurate method but but something that can help us in this situation and and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to get the most accurate results we can so this is an example here in Fresno California Northern California is very very dry so it's similar to the Middle East except a little bit more temperate it's it's a little bit it's a little bit cooler but a very very similar climate but when I looked at the system here and with the team we were working with at California aid solar we said well we want to test these panels but they're covered in dust and the client is complaining that they're not performing correctly immediately we knew it was the dust that was a problem so what we did was we looked at the STC values of the panel and figured out what we should expect so we took the STC vo C and we multiply that by the number of panels in the string in this case we're just testing one panel so it's one and then we multiplied it by the temperature coefficient of the panel similarly for the expected vo C expected I or C rather so voltage is affected by temperature current is affected by irradiance so for the expected ISC we expected 8.1 and that was at a thousand watts per meter squared so what we did was we calculated these expected values and then we took a measurement okay so I saw we saw a eleven point six percent loss on voltage and we saw a 30 point thirty-seven percent loss on courage so you can see the massive amount of difference there between the two but what this allowed us to do is figure out a soiling factor so we said okay well now we know that soil panel gives us this much gives us this loss so what we did was we cleaned the panel down tested it again and then the difference between the two was our soiling factor so although we couldn't clear clean all of the modules we then could apply that soiling factor to the rest of our system so we could extrapolate it out and as I say not only percent accurate this this this these processes we're doing and never are there are a lot of variables but it helps us get more accurate so this is some this isn't basically just to run through what I've just said so we're going to remove a single pile from the array measure the panel while that soils clean it thoroughly then measure that clean panel it must be in the same azimuth and inclination as the solar panel and then using our clean and dirty results we can work out the soil in fact we should also perform just a quick look through the the racking system because we're there anyway we're doing the visual inspection right and we're sorting out all of these soiling issues and getting prepared to test so let's take a look at the mounting system as well so very briefly then aluminium structures are generally used for rooftop systems and they have a layer of anodization and if the anodized is if the anodized layer is compromised in some way or maybe hasn't been applied correctly in the factory then that can cause deterioration of the aluminium and this can be particularly painful in high saline environments or coastal environments et
similarly same as steel systems they can oxidize you know they can rust particularly again in areas of extreme temperature variations particularly if you're dealing with a rooftop system and maybe it's a tiled roof or a slate roof or whatever it may be just make sure that with whether the roof hooks in brest into the into the rooftop that it's watertight that there's no water gonna get in there because if you get up on the roof and you see a crack in it and then you get get do all of your work you get down at the end of the day you say hey mrs. Smith there's a crack on your roof they'll probably blame you for that so just just just be just be acutely aware of what you're working with not only electrically but also with the mounting systems when he legal attest when you leave in tests I promise we're going to connect an instrument soon but we're still on our pre testing preparation and we need to make sure that we have really good light conditions so the the picture you see on the left you can probably tell I'm from the northeast of England I drove five hours to get to this site I think it was in Leicester or somewhere and we had 200 watts per meter squared of irradiance couldn't do any testing what a waste of time ok the picture on the right is the other side of the world this is the island of Oahu and on the right-hand side of picture is the beautiful Pacific Ocean clear as day both places Lester Oahu same problem low light so always consider where you're gonna be and look at that weather forecast now luckily in Hawaii the cloud would go and it would move but what that would mean is we had unstable white conditions so it was low light then high then low light and high and that also messes up your IV curve and some of the current readings my suggestion if you have either of these conditions is to just just put I D curve tracing to the side perform your voltage current and installation resistance tests because you won't get an accurate IV curve under these conditions similarly we need accurate temperature readings so make sure that the temperature sensor is placed correctly on the back of the panels okay this is particularly difficult if you have glass on glass panels because we're trying to get a reading of the cell temperature so trying to get a reading of that through the glass is it's really tough so that's something that si would group are looking to to innovate with at the moment and we're thinking of ideas on that also with your temperature sensor make sure earth with your irradiance meter make sure it's in the same inclination and azimuth as the panel's if you're using an instrument that doesn't take irradiance and doesn't take temperature then this isn't this isn't so much of a big thing but if your instrument does use these variables then you need them absolutely in the in the correct in the correct position with the temperature probe leave it to acclimatize also leave it give it a couple of minutes to to get up to temperature okay so I very quickly covered our expected values versus our measured values and we can calculate these and if our measured V or C is differing to what we expected then we could have shorted bypass diodes PID on legacy systems wiring connection issues or reverse polarity if you measured ISC is different to your expected is C this could indicate a ground fault a micro crack a combination of faults so you can't figure out what is wrong with the system in real terms without the irradiance and the temperature coefficients so that's why it's really essential to get these and then we can figure out our expected values so we've gone to site we've done our pre testing preparation now we check the instrument our visual inspection is fine we have an idea in our head of our expected values I think we're now really nearly ready to test and to do that we can follow an IEC standard they make it nice and easy for us as they do in most things but the International Electrotechnical Commission 6 2 4 4 6 2016 4 grid-connected photovoltaic systems little snapshot here what it is I'll not read this out it basically covers everything we're supposed to cover with regard to minimum requirements for documentation in commissioning of PV systems so I would advise looking up this standard if you're really interested in this it makes for good bedtime reading I'm based here in Tampa Florida so we here in North America we have a slightly different system we work by the National Electric called article 6 90.1 but this is also in line with the UL standards which are very commonly in line with the IEC standard so it's it's almost insoluble getting a nice international unified standard which is really quite wonderful and unique so some of the test categories in this 6 to 4 for 6 2016 seaweed group can cover pretty much all of these for you we can get you a product back on so for continuity tests the 150 the 210 polarity everything will do that combiner box tests everything open circuit everything we do short circuit everything we do installation tests of DC Circuit's the 150 and the 210 if you need IV curve tracing we've got several options here so our PV 210 is a 1000 volt 15 amp instrument it will do the curve tracing of that level the PBA 1000 asks from Sol metric is an instrument that we also distribute that is again a 1000 volt curve tracer but it will work up to 30 amps and the PD a 1500 is a 1500 volt 30 amp IV curve tracer that C would group can provide from the USA and also the Sun I to 10 for shade analysis so we really have a complete testing range for solar PV covered by Serie Group USA and see what electronic limited in the UK we could we can cover your your IC 6 2 4 4 6 requirements worldwide so getting to the nitty-gritty of the tests now there are some essential tests that we should run these are really basic electrical tests I'm not going to cover too much on these but we take continuity of protective Earth's so we're just making sure we have a path to grant we need to figure out our insulation resistance again pretty standard electrical test but this is really key in so low because we can we can really have a high risk of electric shock and fire with solar as seen by some of the recent instance in the in the news and again our PB 210 and 150 can do the the insulation resistance test in two ways okay we're going to short out the circuit and measure the insulation from positive to earth in the shorted state and we're looking for at least one mega ohm but also we have a point-to-point insulation resistance test there also so when we look to test in the combiner this is probably one of the most dangerous places for us to test a solar PV system but if you're commissioning a larger scale sign this is generally where you will be working I would imagine but even if you're testing a commercial system or some residential systems there will be a combiner box or sometimes called a junction box or maybe you'll be connecting to the PV system at a DC disconnect that has a fuse or maybe there refuses in the in the inverter itself and you're connecting down there at the bottom of the inverter so for this we really want to consider our PPE and make sure that we're wearing the correct equipment but as you can see with these pictures here on the right we have some combiner boxes and we have the full PPE category there in the bottom right because those were really really large 30 amp fuses we were working at at those strings in Alabama I'll not cover this in too much detail but we're gonna connect safely were to open up the combiner box we're going to open up all of the fuse harnesses this is what I like to do anyway I'm gonna take out all of the fuses so some people like to leave them in the fuse holders or the harnesses and then close them one at a time I like to take them all out it just adds a little bit of extra safety from all the current particularly if you're using one of the more expensive saw metric devices you know it's there's nothing worse than over current in a $10,000 instrument which I have seen several times over current is the most common problem I see in the field particularly in combiner boxes so we'll open up all of the fuses take a take open up all the harnesses take out all of the fuses we're going to connect a common negative common positive and ground and then we're going to close one fuse at a time with obviously one harness at a time with a fuse in test save it open the fuse next one close test save open close test save and we're going to repeat that and we can do a combiner box safely and efficiently in about 10 minutes with the solar utility Pro we can also do that with the the 210 and the 150 so we can just absolutely plow through the combiner boxes and I think the highest we did on this site here in Alabama that was actually two megawatts in in two days so that was a great great achievement by the team string level testing should not be underestimated either it should still be a two-man process there are still a lot of issues particularly if you're going to connect down at the bottom of the inverter as you can see here with my colleagues at Sun Run that was out in Hawaii again we've connected here at the bottom of the inverter but sometimes the inverter can hold a capacitive charge so we just need to shut off the AC make sure we've got none of that grid coming through let me inverted shutdown and dissipate any of that residual energy this picture here was taken by my old colleague Mark Baron and mark helped with the development of the solar utility Pro and again that's that's out in England but again you can see we're testing down the inverter but we've just pulled the MC falls from the bottom and that's probably the safest way and again that's what we're doing here on the site out in Alabama and that's my colleague they're real real was a great engineer and Rios actually left us for a year so he's gone off on his travels but he comes back and helps us develop some more great products so thank you to you too but so yeah just follow all safety procedures make sure you got a solid connection and again just because you're testing it string level doesn't mean you have to neglect your PPE okay just make sure you're testing safe so all that being said pre testing preparation how we can act what tests we're going to do in how under the IEC 64 for six how do we get good measurements there's no point going out there and wish there a time doing all this and then we come back to the office and we have some really crap measurements let's let's let's look at some good measurement tips real basics always take measurements from a clean array whenever possible we take measurements with large deviations from your expected values so if you run a test and you think it looks bad don't save it and then move on okay cuz what will happen is someone back in the office will go hey Paul why number four does it look bad or I don't know I just saved it moved on what we need to do is prove that negative so if you get a reading that's deviated largely from your expected values test it again and just make sure no one walked over the panels no one walked in front of the panels a bird didn't fly in front of the panels or whatever silly reason just make sure you do have a bad string and then when you do make sure to make a note of that and maybe for further investigation it's it's it can be tough however you don't want to get led down the rabbit hole of a bad string because we didn't have to commission the entire plant so I always think prove the negative and then come back to it at the snagging stage rather than trying to go off and do it while you're in the middle of the commissioning but obviously that's down to you and your processes we want to ensure that the irradiance level is stable during the test and that your radiance meter is in the same plane as the array and is free from shading we also want to make let the temperature sensor acclimatize when you're connecting wherever you're connecting make sure you have a really firm connection and don't leave any gaps between the connectors because you can get arcing make sure the device is clean especially around the inputs the buttons on the screen so this picture right here which you can see I'm gonna try and zoom in on the as I say I'm sorry this isn't my usual setup here nevermind but this this picture here and if you can see it quite well but there's a lot of gunk and clay inside of the the mc4 connections and this was this was our sole utility Pro unit was used to develop a large site on in the northern part of Oahu in in Hawaii we had about 10-12 units they're working hard on a 1500 volt site but it was just clay the ground was clay and for the best ball in the world the guys were trying their best that you know that they're under pressure to get systems commission under time and we did have some issues with with this this connection being covered in clay which caused arcing aside which damaged the unit luckily the unit was damaged and norm was hurt but just just no matter what the circumstances are with regard to commissioning don't don't I don't compromise your safety store instruments at room temperature and in a smoke-free environment just like you would any electronic device keep spare batteries with you keep spare batteries with you keep spare batteries with you don't drive for hours like me and then figure out you've got the wrong batteries and have to drive two hours back the other way to a battery store to buy the correct batteries which has happened to me instrument best practices okay so you want to start at room temperature like I said but you can operate it from an AC cooled vehicle like I mentioned previously which we've done here in the states monitor the ambient temperature a lot okay make sure that it's not getting above the maximum rated temperature of the instrument whatever that may be and also with the best pro in the world the suction cups on temperature probes do fall off under these extreme environments particularly we get condensation so I always take a bit of tape with me or a vise and keep the device clean at all times I can't stress that enough for personnel best practices you really need well-ventilated like PPE you don't want to be you don't to be out there sweating but in either environment you need to be well ventilated make sure everyone's hydrated rotate personnel when you can and ensure data can be captured quickly from the field okay we don't want to be messing around playing around with software or anything we just want nice easy operation get those two megawatts done in two days get get get that combiner done in 10 minutes don't be messing around with complicated software or procedures get the system commissioned and test from a shaded area whenever possible the next half of the presentation that I have right here is regard to IV curve tracing and IV curve tracing is a concept whereby we can get a good gauge of the performance of the system it's a performance verification tool but it's also good as a an om and fault-finding tool we will be having another webinar on this topic in particular that will be coming up next so I'm not going to cover this in detail today but what I would like to do is I would like to open up the floor to questions and while those questions are coming in what I'm going to do is I'm just going to run back through the topics we've covered today and hopefully we can we can get some of those questions answered for you so what we cover today is we first covered that we need to do our pre testing preparation with regard to our instrument need to find out do you have all of our cables or our batteries correct or our staff fit to use this instrument we then need to do our pre testing preparation in terms of what do we need for the site what will the climate be what will the environment be what will be the point of connection and then also we need to do our pre testing preparation in terms of our expected values so what voltage should I see on this string what current should I see on this string and then also we need to our visual inspection are we looking for shading we're looking for cracks in the cabling by mammals by faulty work maybe there is water ingress we're checking the mounting system were then ready to begin our testing and what we're
oing to do is there we're going to follow the IEC six two four four six 2016 we're then going to perform our testing safely either at the combiner box the inverter the junction box the DC disconnect we're going to get that data accurately using our good measurement tips and we're going to get it efficiently using a C word test instrument and then we're going to be bit ago and our system should hopefully be ready to be switched on so I see a couple of questions coming through here someone was asking if there is that if the the webinar will be recorded yes it definitely will be recorded we will be sending out a link to the video someone asked about what type of systems are available to test 1500 1500 volt strings yeah that's a very good it's a very good question I think whenever you're you're looking to buy a new test equipment you should always consider future proofing your investment and 1500 volt systems are definitely the way forward so if you working with a company and and they don't offer a 1500 volt solutions it's incredibly limited reading especially with the way that the industry is heading I know there are some out there that don't have a 1500 volt solution I think amazes this one and then there's also companies like another tht have an instrument which is 1500 volts but only at 10 amps so just be careful of that here at see what grip we believe in offering a true 1500 volt solution so we have our fifteen hundred volt 40 amp solar utility pros so you can really actually work in a fifteen hundred volt system and then also if you need curve tracing we can offer the the market the the highest accuracy curve tracer on the market the symmetric PV a 1500 again rated at 30 amps so that's super-important okay let me take what tests G deem are essential when commissioning a PV system that's a really good question obviously when we're commissioning I think the most common problem we see is reversed polarity okay that you know someone's not terminated connection correctly so every instrument we have will look for that but it really voltage in short circuit current they're the two essential tests for me any other test is an added benefit and can give us a lot more information I think third - that would be the insulation resistance test which is super important but if we have good vo seeing good IOC data with good irradiance and temperature data so if you have an instrument that doesn't take irradiance and in temperature that's that's not very good so I always does that and then we can calculate our expected values and and figure out any problems and then the other reason I think voltage and current short-circuit in particular or good for the PV industry and PV professionals is it's easy to understand once we start getting into the concept of IV curves have we short out the circuit and then we vary a resistive load on the circuit from short circuit current to open circuit we get the the V MPP the I NP P these are all very very interesting in very high-level concepts but when we're trying to give that to a technician in the field who's probably been working on a commercial or residential properties or you know in in in maintenance work for his life then that can be a real challenge to understand those terms so that's why I think just keeping things as simple as possible with regard to voltage current get the irradiance get the temperature but also make the operation of the instrument as easy as possible that was our main aim even the sole metric uses you need a separate laptop to run that machine and you have to install software and drivers you know other instruments on the market they really over complicate things when really the the simple commissioning test should be just that they should be simple we should follow the IC six two four four six and we should get two megawatts two mega 2 megawatts of commissioning done every two days that's my aim because ultimately that's that's what matters timers money I had a question here it says thanks very much for the presentation very very interesting what does your system do to work with what does that say Oh DC optimizers so DC optimizers actually will only output a single vault per panel when they're not connected to the main string inverter and they use power line communication to communicate this to the optimizers so when we disconnect from the inverter to connect into our instrument immediately the rapid shutdown of the module level power electronics kicks in and we can't run any tests they also don't like to be shorted out and they certainly don't like to be curved traced with or in our installation tested with a thousand bolts running over them so we're actually this is actually something that we're trying to innovate on at the moment so I would ask that you watch this space and hopefully in there in the coming in the coming time seaweed will have a really innovative solution coming through so what's this space on power level module level power electronic testing I had a question here from Mohammed where can it be found in Egypt yes sir we have distributors globally in in in North Africa and the Middle East so we'd be able to put you in touch with someone there so we'll certainly send you an email I think mr. master here has had some problems connecting to the PV system I think connecting no sorry connecting to the webinar so yes it will be recorded Michael Michael do doc here has a really interesting question he says hello Michael I've got a question if the testing is a innovative way to maintain a PV installation I'm asking in terms of getting funds on testing equipment thank you Michael that's a really good really good Rigo question and so I think when you go to side and you're there to Commission you know you've installed you're commissioning it you're using the tool this commissioning tool and you're getting a really good report for your client you've got all of the information what that does is it sets a baseline for you so what you have then is this is my day 1 report on my system so in terms of getting funds for the equipment what you can say is ok well I've used this equipment to get a baseline of what my system is now I can go back in 12 months tests with the same kit and compare like for like my day 1 report with my day 365 report and then what you can do is you can use that to then say okay well look I tested on day 1 it was this I've tested a year later and it's this you can see actually you're losing this much generation the reason you're losing it is because there's a cable issue or you're losing it because the panel's are dirty and what you can do is you can then say to the client hey listen let me clean your panels you can see that over time the system gets problems I can come back here every 12 months with my instrument test for you so you can charge for the testing and the maintenance work but then you can also charge for all the associated services the cleaning maybe you can upsell them the client into another technology hey your systems been running really well for two years now did you know we now have a really good battery offering I've tested your system every year for two years and I know if I add a battery system you could get this more generation you could fix this bell curve there are lots of interesting ways there for maintenance and making it a revenue stream Michael and I actually have a whole presentation on this it's called diversifying your PV installation business in 2om so I'll send you that out of interest if that would be of interest mister master says do you have a distributor in Trinidad the Caribbean the Caribbean yes we can manage that region from here in Tampa Florida but Musti has a question here really interesting grid tie systems are not in use as yet however battery based systems for residential systems are common use how does these how do these test instruments working conditions located close to beaches dealing with saltwater and mist you know it's a really good question and it kind of comes back to what we discussed about considering the environment before we began to test and it's really interesting you know here in Florida we were also affected a lot by the Hurricanes it's a real real concern and in out in California not the Hurricanes particularly but the other wildfires they have out there battery storage in California is just going to absolutely explode so with regard to testing the batteries themselves it really depends on the technology so if you're dealing with lithium-ion it's very different to dealing with wet acid batteries there but there are already established test instruments to do that so you can you can buy those off the shelf right now particularly with letta led acid batteries I mean that's a car battery right so there's lots out there but with regard to the PV system itself the the the the panels we would really test it in in the way we would test any other systems we would disconnect from from the inverter and the charge controller and the battery bank we would run a test on the PV panels and make sure that the panels are running correctly we could then use something like the PV 210 that'll be great in that situation because it has a separate continuity tester it has a separate current clamp and a separate insulation tester that you can use on both AC and DC systems so you could use some continuity testing with your battery bank so again really good system the PV 210 for that application but in particularly in dealing with salt and water mist to try and keep the device dry and try and test from a dry environment and when you're storing it we did have some people putting them in sandwich bags and then in a cool box so that's that's quite an interesting but we've got to be careful condensation okay thank you Michael hope to hear from you soon Martin as strangers and I do apologize if I'm pronouncing anyone's name incorrectly we now have a group that requires IV curves in the commissioning documents we normally only provided the is C and V or C data is this a requirement according to the IEC and what is your opinion Michael this is a great question I honestly think that IV curve tracing can be a little bit of a red herring and I think it's been ingrained now into a lot of contracts here at the state's a lot of the epcs I work with they just they say we need curve tracing I said well why don't you just do B or C and IC they said well we we need it because it's in the contract and really there's not much you can do to argue with the contract it doesn't matter I think if there was a presidential decree to say that we didn't need curve tracing it would still be in the contract because a lot of them are copied and pasted so you're battling against the the stream there a lot of the time trying to change people's opinions however with regard to the IEC it is a category 2 requirement in the six two four four six so the IEC 64-46 the category one tests they're considered essential under the IEC from the top of my head that's the continuity test voltage installation combiner box current the short-circuit or operating and there's one more which I can't remember but but but but the the category two tests they're considered they're less essential tests in a more performance verification and maintenance test so that would be let me see electroluminescence IV thermography those are kind of the category two tests so in answer to your question Martin no it's not a stringent requirement by the IEC because it's a category two tests but if it's in the contracts you got to do it Johann says thank you for the informative presentation can we get a copy of your slides absolutely your hand will be sending out a copy of the slides and also a recording will be up on our YouTube channel I believe that you'll be able to view there so the questions seem to have slowed down there but oh got one more here up for PV installations using non-commercial rocking or self-made racking how does this impact on the installation and the test results in other words is the test results based on using tested commercial racking systems from vendors good question dividend the answer is is it bonded okay is the racking system gram bonded if it is then we'll get good insulation results if it's not you'll get greater than you'll get greater than 200 mega ohms on your tester because it'll just be testing from the PV array to open a so yeah you need you need you need to be connected to a good grant is the question so and also I would say the big consideration and I worked in rockin for a good while with these homemade systems is just wind loading just be super careful don't let clients just throw up something and then you put your panels on top of it really use a graded system they're so cheap it's our menu it's steel get it from China or in some way it's really not that do not use your own systems because what will happen is they just won't be secure and particularly in Trinidad when you're dealing with very high winds I would advise against using it I would use a Ledge a good racking system from a reputable supplier and honestly they'll have so many resources for you also they'll have wind loading calculators they'll have design tools racking system and Manning system manufacturers have read really good people I like so thanks everyone for your time today I think I think that's about us it's it's nearly time to go but see what electronic Limited abased in pizza Lee in the northeast of England from there we can supply the rest of world Europe the UK India Asia Africa we can supply the whole world here in North America I'm based out of Tampa Florida and we can supply Canada America in South America so if any of these regions are where you are and you would like some more information you can contact me using the information here on the screen please do feel free to call me as I said we'll also be sending up we'll be sending a follow-up email which will have today's slides and also we'll be sending a copy of the YouTube video be sure to reach out to me on LinkedIn it will be great to contact with you there it's Michael middle mast and I'm the category for renewables here at seaward I hope everyone has a great rest of their day and I'll see you on the next one thank you
