30 degrees of difficulty

Brunswick Town Hall is an iconic Melbourne landmark, built in 1876, which survived the wrecker’s ball in 1974 after a local protest campaign. Although it earns its keep today as a popular social venue, it was one the top 10 energy users in the municipality.

This did not fit well with Moreland Council — the third accredited carbon-neutral council in Australia — but installing solar panels on the three-storey historic building with a 30° slope on its corrugated iron roof presented some difficult installation problems.

Installer Envirogroup also faced the need to overcome the problem of potential traffic disruption, as the location of the Town Hall on Sydney Road, Brunswick is one of Melbourne’s busiest arterial roads. Safety was also a major requirement and required the installation of safety rails on the roof and harnesses for all the installers.

The main roof area was also found to be insufficient to house enough conventional solar panels to generate the required energy level of 100 kWp, and using the lower roof area was seen to be inefficient as it is subject to shadowing for part of the day.

The eventual solution was to use the high-efficiency PERC Mono Trina Solar 290 Wp panels, which are more efficient than conventional panels.   

The final installation used 345 panels on the main roof, which will generate 111 kWh per year and provide a greenhouse gas offset of 13,981 tonnes, or 33 cars. To get the same energy output with conventional 260 Wp panels would have required more than 400 panels.

The more efficient panels not only reduced the number of panels that were required, it also reduced the installation time as well as obtaining more energy out of the roof space.

According to the lead electrician on the install, Nick Garric, it was the most difficult job he’s tackled in the seven years he has been an installer.

“Our installing team members were in safety harnesses for the four-week installation period and, because of the number of panels, we had to lay them in a landscape pattern, rather than the usual portrait configuration.

“This meant our roof access had to be up the 30° slope, rather than along the roof.

“Because of the age of the building and the roof, another difficulty we had to overcome was in running the cables from the panels to the inverter.

“Clearly the 290 Wp panels were the solution for us to get enough panels on the roof to generate the required level of energy, and we had no handling difficulties compared to the standard 260 Wp panels.

“Being on a 30° slope, the panels are largely self-cleaning, whereas if we had to use the lower flat roof areas there would have been significant soiling, as the traffic in busy Sydney Road generates a high level of road grime,” Garric said.

Trina Solar Sales Manager Govind Kant said that the Brunswick Town Hall installation is the first use of the 290 Wp solar panels in Australia.

“Although the standard poly modules still have a niche market, the rapid improvement in efficiency with mono modules, coupled with the minimal price gap between the poly and the mono modules, will soon see mono modules becoming mainstream. The extra price on the mono modules is offset by the greater savings on the balance of the system,” Kant said.