The challenge
The park’s tenants lose trading hours every time load-shedding hits. A single diesel generator covers essential loads, but it runs for hours a day, fuel costs swing with the price at the pump, and changeovers drop sensitive equipment.
Daytime electricity is bought at full tariff while large, unshaded roofs sit unused. Tenants are recharged from one bulk meter split by floor area, so nobody has a reason to change how they use power.
The landlord wants solar, but not a system that switches off the moment the grid goes down, which is how many grid-tied installations behave.
Our approach
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Load and roof study
We log consumption per tenant and the generator’s runtime for several weeks, survey every roof for structure and shading, and size the solar and storage against the real load profile rather than a rule of thumb.
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Microgrid design
Hybrid inverters, batteries and the existing generator are designed as one system. A grid outage switches the park to battery almost instantly, and the generator only starts when the batteries need it.
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Energy management
A PLC-based controller decides, minute by minute, whether to charge, discharge, export or start the generator, based on the tariff period, battery charge, weather forecast and load-shedding schedule.
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Monitoring and tenant billing
Generation, storage, generator runtime and each tenant’s consumption feed one SCADA view. Tenants are billed from their own meters, and monthly reports show solar yield, diesel saved and carbon avoided.
System architecture
How the layers connect, from the people using the system down to the equipment in the field.
- Facilities manager
- Tenants (monthly statements)
- Landlord reports
- Energy dashboard and alarms
- Solar yield, diesel and carbon reports
- PLC-based energy management controller
- Tariff and load-shedding logic
- Hybrid inverters
- Battery storage
- Diesel generator
- Grid connection
- Tenant sub-meters
- Solar and battery meters
- Generator runtime and fuel
What we’d deploy
- Rooftop solar sized to the measured daytime load
- Battery storage with fast changeover during grid outages
- PLC-based energy management with tariff and load-shedding logic
- Generator integration so diesel runs only as a last resort
- Tenant sub-metering for fair, consumption-based recharges
- Solar yield, diesel and carbon reporting for ESG disclosure
Target outcomes
Targets we would design and report against, not measured results from a named client. Actual results depend on the baseline established in the audit.
