Social Housing Project Pares Back Greenhouse Gas Emissions with Ease
Nijmegen is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands and has a number of neighborhoods that needed renovation. The same was true for a 24-flat social housing estate where residents were waiting for a rooftop solar project that could reduce their energy bills.
Plug and Play
There’s never time to waste during a commercial solar project, not for the customers or the installers. By installing solar, Talis, a social housing corporation that manages 14,000 homes in the Netherlands, is supporting a national push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at residential properties. Tenants at a Talis estate in Nijmegen have a vested interest as well, as the 26 kW rooftop solar project on their building is expected to cut their energy bills by about 40 percent on average.
The Talis project was challenging from the outset because of roof space that was tightly constrained by chimneys and ventilation ducts. The installer, 100% Zonnig, selected the Enphase System for three reasons. First, its design flexibility provided value before and during the installation, limiting the time needed to figure out where to place solar modules on the roof and how to configure the array. In addition, the system’s ability to maximize power output and optimize performance continues to provide value throughout the lifetime of the system.
“With traditional PV technologies, only modules with the same orientation can be placed in one string,” said David van Duijnhoven, co-owner of 100% Zonnig. “With such a limited space, and having to connect three to nine modules per flat, we would have created many strings resulting in an intricate design. With Enphase, we could choose the most convenient combination while simplifying the layout to a minimum.”
Savings from Day One
While the Talis estate was undergoing renovations to improve energy efficiency, 100% Zonnig installed a 26.25 kW split array with one sub-array oriented south-southwest and another facing to the east. At the installation site, the crew was able to rapidly connect preconfigured microinverters with Enphase’s Envoy communications gateway and Engage cables. As another contractor had already placed an electrical connection on the roof, 100% Zonnig managed to mount the Microinverter System in four days, minimizing inconvenience for tenants.
“Enphase was critical for this project,” van Duijnhoven said.
Equipped with the advanced solar energy system from Enphase, Talis tenants in Nijmegen can expect to see savings of around 200 Euros per year on average. Talis can also count on Enphase’s 20-year hassle-free warranty as its solar electric system ages gracefully in the Netherlands’s oldest city. “Enphase’s long-lasting warranty protects the investment and adds value to the homes” added Marcel Budding, a co-owner of 100% Zonnig.
