Adding Solar Energy to your Harvest

Photo credit: Jeff Gatzka, Pickett Solar

Fowler Packing Company is harvesting more than just fruit these days. Pickett Solar, a Sunny PRO Club member based in Fresno, CA, recently commissioned a 2.3 megawatt PV system that offsets two-thirds of the energy needs of the Central Valley company’s packing, cooling and storage facilities.

The system features 8,256 Canadian Solar panels installed on single axis trackers, and four SMA Sunny Central 500HE-US inverters.

“Since the location of the solar field was approximately 3,500 feet away from the existing meters to be back-fed, we decided on the Sunny Central 500HE-US inverters because they were not coupled to a redundant 480 volt transformer. This allowed each group of two Inverters to be coupled to a 200 volt/12,470 volt dual-winding, step-up transformer that allowed us to cost-effectively send the power 3,500 feet away to the meter locations.” –  Jeff Gatzka,  Pickett Solar Designer

The Sunny Central 500HE-US

Photo credit: Jeff Gatzka, Pickett Solar

The Sunny Central 500HE-US couples to an external medium-voltage transformer to accommodate long distance power feeds to distribution substations and delivers the high efficiency and reliable operation. A user-friendly interface features a large LCD that provides a graphical view of the daily plant production as well as the status of the inverter and the utility grid. Flexible plant monitoring is available through various communications solutions such as Ethernet, Modbus, RS485 and OPC. Designed for easy installation, operation and performance monitoring, the UL-certified Sunny Central 500HE-US is the ideal choice for large-scale PV projects.