Sundog Energy has installed Cumbria’s largest commercial solar PV system at Lakeland Livestock Mart in Cockermouth. The 50kWp system is the first to utilise Trina Solar’s new Trinamount mounting system in Europe.
The retrofit installation consists of 212 Trina Solar Modules mounted on the livestock market’s pitched steel roof. The array is expected to generate enough electricity to meet the market’s requirements during the day, with any excess exported back to the National Grid.
Ben Hill, President Europe at Trina Solar said: “We are very pleased to announce the completion of the first Trinamount project in Europe. Mounting modules with the innovative Trinamount solution saves time and reduces overall system costs. This further increases pricing competitiveness of solar energy compared to traditional energy sources.”
The Trinamount mounting system utilises a specialised frame that accepts a series of drop-in and quarter-turn connections that connect directly to the module frame, which Trina Solar claim drastically reduces the number of parts, eliminating the need for traditional mounting rails.
Bill Roberts, Managing Director of Sundog commented: “The recently announced reduction in solar subsidies means that we are adopting innovative ways to reduce installation times and therefore costs for our customers and the installers we supply. We believe that this new system will be quickly taken up by installers around the UK.”
Martin Cotterell, Founder and Technical Director of Sundog, explained how recent Governmental cuts nearly jeopardised the whole project, stating:“We had a race against time in very testing weather conditions to complete this landmark installation before the December 12, deadline for the feed-in tariff.”