Our biggest, most challenging and one of our most rewarding projects to date! Sheldon College have a reputation as a world-class educational facility with the motto ‘Achieve the Extraordinary’ and they wanted their solar system to do just that!

The project was designed to be completed in 6 stages over the school holidays to ensure the least amount of disruption to the education of the students. This allowed plenty of time to plan with Goodhew working closely with our engineers from planning through to completion.

The system consists of 3300 solar panels and 26 inverters housed across 8 different buildings on the campus. Panels were attached to the Northern, Eastern and Western sides of each building to maximise the sunlight from sunrise through to sunset. Each building and system had to be individually designed with the college’s aesthetics in mind. We opted for full black panels and black rails so that the solar system complemented the colleges forward thinking ethos, structures and surroundings.

The 26 inverters are all linked together to create one system. Each building has a sub board monitor that links to the main switchboard monitor. This means that at all times you can monitor each individual system as well as the entire system as a whole. Energy consumption for each building can be monitored and compared to how much of it is offset by the solar that building individually produces. This system is connected via a network protected Ethernet connection, making the system secure and reliable.

This monitoring system that can now be used as a learning platform for students, teaching them about solar energy and sustainability by being able to see how much power was being generated compared to the colleges daily usage.

Sheldon College is a private College located in the Redlands that educates children from 15 months through to year 12. With approximately 1,500 students their energy usage is high. As well as wanting to reduce their electricity costs so that more money can be better spent on the education and school resources, their vision is to be more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible, in turn educating their students on the importance of sustainability.