The aim of this project was to deliver power to the farm yet in a didactic form for which the monitoring of the complete station is made locally thru specific gear and also online thru a special web server dedicated to show the status of the station online.

The station comprises two inverters VFX3048 from outback stacked together to deliver up to 6KVA nominal power and 9KVA on surge with nominal 230VAC.

The Solar array is composed of 20 Lorentz LC120 multicristaline pannels sitting on a fixed platform made of local timber and a scaffolding type metal frame. The array is organized in 4 strings of 5 pannels each summing up a pratical figure of +/- 109Volt dc  as the pannels are more or less 21,8v in open circuit each.

The Solar Charge Regulator is a Outback FM60 capable of addressing up to 60 Amps of power at a MPPT tracking function.

The Eolic turbine is a Whisper 200 capable of producing up to 900 watt of power per hour under wind speed conditions of 12m/s minimum.

Is has it´s own charge regulator capable of dissipating the excessive power produced when the battery is already full by means of a dump load located in the charge regulator itself.

The Hydro turbine  is a PowerSpout engine with a pelton turbine inside with two injectors.The fall is aproximatly 11 meters total and the lengh of the pipe is 170 meters run of 110mm PEAD.

The intake is a costume made box made out of Acacia from Serra de Sintra with a inner box made of inox plate.

The plataform for the turbine is made for full access of people for a better look and is made out of Acassia as well.

The regulator is a Outback FM 60 mounted together next to the solar regulator on the same frame of the station.

All connectors from DC side are either powerlock connectors for thick cables or adapted regular connectors for ac. The aim is to detach the station at will for the purpose of exibitions or maintenance.

On the AC side we have a combiner box where all connections come together for both AC in (grid backup) or AC OUT  station deliverie.

In this box we also have mounted the bypass switch system which is composed of a mecanically lock of four breakers arranged in two sets of two, i.e. 2 for AC (GRID) and 2 for AC (INVERTERS) only one kind passes to the out AC OUT BUS.

The protection is as usual composed of a general breaker bipolar and a sense breaker.

Two counters for AC IN (GRID backup) and AC out are also part of the set-up.

For each power source we have separate monitoring devices connected to shunts 60m/v series installed in series with the sources.

The monitoring systems are provided by Revalco digital meters which are straiforward to set-up (more or less)

The Station on itself has installed the Outback monitoring system composed of flexnet DC, to monitor the battery behaviour and feedback to regulators and inverters as well as to the main controller item which is the MATE 3 the general programming and monitoring device of the system.

See some images and feel free to ask anything

This project is a Balance in Nature project see more @

https://www.facebook.com/BalanceInNature?ref=ts&fref=ts

LiFE Project here:

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/project/Projects/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.dspPage&n_proj_id=3770