Staar Surgical, a producer of implantable lenses utilized in ophthalmic surgical procedure, has inaugurated a 1.1-MW grid-tied microgrid on its manufacturing facility in Lake Forest, California. Now operational, the system was put in to fulfill three objectives: Cut back power prices, enhance sustainability and safeguard manufacturing within the occasion of grid outages attributable to excessive climate occasions.
Credit score: ReVamp Power
The microgrid is powered by a 780-kW photo voltaic system with a SolarEdge DC-optimized inverter positioned on the ability’s roof and two newly-constructed carports. The 1,752-module system is anticipated to chop Staar Surgical’s power prices by roughly 50%, representing an annual saving of round $325,000.
“Manufacturing contact lenses is a extremely energy-intensive course of that requires every lens to be heated in an industrial kiln constantly for a number of days,” stated Jay Reducing, Snr., president of constructing and photo voltaic contractor, ReVamp Power, which designed, put in and can keep the microgrid. “Any discount in energy of various seconds has the potential to break a whole manufacturing run, resulting in losses of probably lots of or 1000’s of {dollars}. The growing frequency of pink flag climate occasions in California necessitated that Staar Surgical tackle the mission-critical problem of figuring out an economical and sustainable technique to safeguard manufacturing.”
Extra photo voltaic power produced throughout the day might be saved in a 450-kW battery to energy the positioning’s 24/7 manufacturing strains and supply important backup within the occasion of energy outages. The battery is anticipated to supply between eight to 24 hours of back-up energy, dependent upon the manufacturing facility’s load necessities. If the ability outage lasts even longer, the system additionally features a generator, giving Staar Surgical the power to take care of manufacturing.
To make sure seamless operation, ReVamp Power designed custom-made switchgear that may routinely change the positioning’s power provide to back-up energy within the occasion of an influence outage. The microgrid is manageable through the SolarEdge monitoring platform. This may allow Staar Surgical and ReVamp Power to trace quite a lot of key parameters akin to photo voltaic power manufacturing, consumption and battery power ranges in real-time and from a single platform.
“We have now labored with Staar Surgical on a number of photo voltaic installations and for every one we’ve used SolarEdge expertise — it’s a key element of realising the consumer’s requirement for prime power manufacturing, reliability and clever management,” Reducing stated. “This begins with the usage of Energy Optimizers to drag extra energy from the photo voltaic arrays and extends by means of to the technology of highly-granular efficiency knowledge that may allow us to function and keep not simply the photo voltaic set up, however your entire microgrid, in essentially the most environment friendly and cost-effective approach doable.”
Information merchandise from SolarEdge
