Enerpower Undertake Dunderrow Solar Farm Extension

In July 2021, Enerpower completed Ireland’s largest solar farm covering approximately 20 acres of land in Dunderrow, Kinsale Co. Cork. The 5.6MW solar farm was undertaken by Enerpower. Enerpower fully engineered, procured, and constructed the bespoke commercial solar farm. Since the success of the commercial solar panel installation, it has been decided to extend the solar farm.

The Dunderrow Solar farm is being extended by 4.6MW adjacent to the Eli Lilly facility in Cork. The 4.6MW extension will consist of 8,890 Leapton solar panels receiving support from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.

Similar to phase 1, this project is a ground-mounted solar PV system Once completed, the total of the solar farm will be 9635kWp-7229kWac, comprising of a phase 1 south-facing system capacity of 5639kWp-4070kWac and a phase 2 extension with an East/West facing the system and a south-facing system capacity of 3996kWp- 3150kWac.

This project is owned by Enerpower and delivered under a BOOM (Built, Own, Operate and Maintain) Contract. The energy production will be fed into the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical facility over a medium voltage cable at 10kV.

The solar farm extension process began in November 2021 to be completed in August of this year. The 4.6MW is slightly different to Phase 1 as phase 2 has east-west facing panels as well as south facing panels installed. This was ruled as the best option due to the surrounding tree perimeter, the east-west-facing panels would allow for higher maximum output in turn generating more solar electricity for Eli Lilly pharmaceutical facility.

Once completed phase 2 extension will consist of 8,890 Leapton solar panels and 17 Huawei inverters. The Leapton Solar panels allow for higher output power as the panel module adopts 120pcs of 182*182mm half cells and the maximum output power can reach 460W. These solar panels are durable with hard environmental adaptability and PID Protection to ensure the attenuation probability by PID phenomenon is minimised.

Two types of mounting frames are being used throughout phase 2, the AeroCompact for the south-facing panels and the Corab mounting frame is being used for the east/west facing panels.

Once completed the combined solar farm will generate 10.2MW of solar energy annually for Eli Lilly pharmaceutical facility.

Take a look at some in-progress pictures of the Dunderrow Solar Farm Extension.