Football Icon Scores a Solar Win
The Richmond Football Club, an Australian Rules team and local icon for football fans, teamed up with Sustainability Partner Metro Solar in an effort to become a greener organisation. The impact: 100kW of solar and more than 25 years of clean energy benefits.
Commitment to Clean Energy
Home to Melbourne’s Tigers, the Richmond Football Club was ranked #2 by the Australian Football League for the highest game attendance in 2013. And with a current membership base of 60,321, the stadium used its position in the public eye to promote sustainable living.
Metro Solar helped the club develop a solar solution to meet the stadium’s high energy consumption and exploit its roof’s energy potential by installing 100kw of solar on the club’s training and headquarters facility, the ME Bank Centre.
Maximum harvest and performance of the system was crucial in offsetting the facility’s extremely large base load, most of which is consumed during the day. Utilising Enphase technology, Metro Solar was able to design a system with additional generation in the morning and at dusk to increase overall savings for the Richmond Football Club.
“Metro Solar used only the best microinverters on our system,” said club CEO, Brandon Gale. “Enphase’s state-of-the-art microinverters generate up to 25 percent more energy than traditional systems used by other solar companies.”
Enphase microinverters also provided flexibility in the complex design regarding shading factors as well as the system’s overall physical appearance.
Reliability is Paramount
Visited by hundreds of people daily, the Richmond Football Club required a system that was safe and reliable. Avoiding the risks of traditional inverters, such as arc faults, was imperative, and Metro Solar was once again convinced Enphase was the right inverter for the job.
“On such a high-profile site, reliability was paramount. Enphase offered unrivaled reliability in the microinverter space due to their unmatched real-time field data from millions of units deployed worldwide,” said Anthony O’Connell, CEO of Metro Solar.
Enlighten, Enphase’s monitoring software, enables Metro Solar to successfully diagnose problems remotely without having to set foot in the club or disrupt its operations. Metro Solar can measure the output of the individual modules and track internal operating temperature of the microinverter.
“Enlighten allows us to keep the grid honest by being able to measure any significant voltage fluctuations,” said O’Connell. “This is especially crucial in a location where base load will vary greatly, potentially impacting all electrical appliances in the facility.”
Through Enlighten, Metro Solar can aggregate data into their own monitoring package, greatly adding value to their product and service offering.
A Team Effort
Access to Enphase’s highly experienced Field Application Engineers (FAE) gave Metro Solar backup assistance before and during installation.
“The Richmond site was the first Enphase project for my team, and Enphase’s FAEs were always available upon request to guide us along the way,” said O’Connell. “The level of partnership we got from Enphase was second to none.”