Power House Mounting Options:

• SRM – Sloped Roof Mount (standard) BRM
• Ballasted Roof Mount System VRM
• Vertical Roof Mount

Inverter:  10.0 kW Fronius IG +

Warranty: 10 Years

MicroBLOX update:
The MicroBLOX 470 now comes only in Black using two Sharp 235 modules.

With over 2,300 hours of sunshine a year, Edmonton is one of Canada’s sunniest cities. Now, the City of Edmonton will help residents harness the power of the sun.

In response to greater demand for ways to reduce CO2 emissions and growing interest in renewable electricity generation, the City is introducing a solar-electric pilot program.

This one-month program will allocate the total budget of $200,000 in the form of rebates for home and business owners interested in installing solar panels to generate electricity.

“The City is committed to encouraging the use of local renewable energy sources that will reduce local greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mayor Stephen Mandel. “This project could result in more solar electric generating facilities throughout the city, and is one more step towards a cleaner, greener Edmonton.”

The program will pay as much as $9,000 of the cost of installing solar-electric systems in homes and a maximum of $18,000 for systems installed in businesses.  Rebates will vary depending on the capacity of the system installed.

Applications are evaluated on a first-come-first served basis upon receipt of appropriate documentation and will be paid out after installation and certification. All solar-electric systems funded under this program will be subject to a follow-up review by the City and recipients will be surveyed to establish their satisfaction with the installed system.

Solar energy is the cleanest, most abundant, renewable energy source. Today’s technology allows this power to be harnessed in several ways to make effective use of the heat and light of the sun. The City of Edmonton program will help fund solar distributed generation installations with equipment located on rooftops or on arrays close to where the energy is used.

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Program Overview

Total budget: $200,000.

Residential Solar Electric Program – The program covers systems with a rated capacity of a minimum of one kilowatt with the rebate based on $3.00 per watt of installed capacity.

The maximum allowable rebate per residential system will be $9,000. For example, a residential system with panels having a rated capacity of one kilowatt would be eligible for a rebate of $3,000 and a larger system of 3 kilowatts would be eligible for a rebate of $9,000.

Commercial Solar Electric Program – The program covers systems with a rated capacity of a minimum of two kilowatts and a maximum capacity of ten kilowatts with the rebate based on a rate of $3.00 per watt of installed capacity.

The maximum allowable rebate per commercial system will be $18,000. The program is available for existing buildings within the City of Edmonton. The term ‘commercial’ encompasses: 1) non-residential buildings, and 2) residential buildings with a footprint greater than 600 m2 or greater than three storeys.

The program is for existing buildings only and funds systems that will be installed between September 1 and December 31, 2010. Interested applicants are asked to visit the Solar Electric Pilot Program website for more information and to read the terms and conditions of the program.

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Sharp’s ND-220U2 solar module incorporates an advanced surface texturing process to increase light absorption and improve efficiency. Common application include commercial and residential grid-tied roof systems as well as ground mounted arrays. Designed to withstand rigorous operating conditions, this module offers high power output per square foot of solar array.

This module offers a superior price performance ratio due to its 72 advanced polycrystalline cells connected in series.

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Boasted as Sharp’s most powerful residential module, it’s also aesthetically pleasing with a black backsheet and sleek black frame creating a modern silhouette on nearly any roof. This module incorporates an advanced cell surface texturing process to increase light absorption and improve efficiency.  Versatile enough to permit installation on nearly any kind of roof, the 235 watt module is the newest innovation in Sharp’s residential product line and the black is surely an elegant detail.

What’s new
Grounding selectable on site.
Decide on site what type of grounding is required as the Fronius IG Plus is field programmable for either positive or negative module grounding.

Designed for indoor and outdoor installations.
All Fronius IG Plus inverters have a robust, well designed aluminum housing.  UV resistance and corrosion protection enable them to be used either indoors or outdoors.  Fronius is proud to be one of the only inverters tested and approved to operate at 122

Integrated DC disconnect.
No external DC disconnect installation or cabling is necessary.  The Fronius IG Plus comes complete with an approved, built-in, lockable and load breakable DC Disconnect.

The new power plug system.
The connection area and power stages are installed separately from each other. Very easy and extremely safe:  The connection area is attached to the wall as normal. Then the power module is simply plugged in. The power plug connects both parts into one secure unit.  If service is required, the connector remains on the wall  maintaining all settings and configurations.

Field Programmable AC output voltage.
The Fronius IG Plus inverter line from 3.0 to 11.4 kW is field programmable to 208, 240 or 277 volts (Fronius IG Plus 12.0 kW only availabale in 277 volts), eliminating the need to install different inverter models to accommodate three-phase installations.

Technological info
Three efficiency peaks.
Greater power harvest for every system size:  The unique automatic transformer switching function of the Fronius IG Plus makes enables not one, but three equal efficiency peaks. The result:  Consistantly high efficiency over a wide input voltage range. In comparison:  The efficiency of inverters without transformer switching declines steadily with an increasing input voltage. Devices without a transformer only have one efficiency peak.
With a 96.2 % maximum efficiency, the Fronius IG Plus series scores the highest grade among HF devices.

MIX™ Concept.
Get the maximum power harvest out of partial load ranges, e.g. on cloudy days, through a clever combination of multiple power stages in each inverter.  The power stages in Fronius inverters divide up the work depending on operating hours and only operate as many power stages as required to efficiently process available power from the PV array.

Module Manager™.
The Module Manager™ keeps all Fronius IG inverters at the maximum power point (MPP) with fast and exact MPP tracking, ensuring that you get the most power out or each ray of sunlight.  This is especially important for amorphous modules whose MPP can be more challenging to track.

Why Enphase?
With non-uniform changes in temperature, irradiance, and shading create complex current-voltage curves, further affecting energy harvest. This is due to the fact that in traditional systems the performance of the entire system is dictated by the performance of the weakest module.

The Enphase Energy Microinverter System solves solar power challenges by performing Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) at each solar module. The centralized inverter’s MPPT algorithm sees the entire solar power system as a single module, and responds to the lowest production numbers it detects.The Enphase MPPT algorithm works at each solar module in an installation and achieves greater than 99.6% accuracy which enables it to maximize energy harvest at all times, even during variable light conditions. Tests show systems using Enphase Microinverters increase energy harvest by as much as 25% over systems using traditional inverters.

The Enphase Microinverter works in conjunction with the Envoy communications gateway and the Enlighten website. See the Enlighten website in action on our site by clicking here.