Why did Federation University decide to invest in a commercial solar power system?

Federation University had a goal of reducing their greenhouse emissions and power consumption by modernising their buildings. They decided to put solar on their roofs to achieve this goal. They approached an environmental consultant company to create a plan that could help them tackle their emissions. This plan resulted in the involvement of a solar company that offered a high-quality product to meet the brief.

The solar company had a challenging task because of the complex roof structure of the buildings. They decided to install optimisers on every panel to maximise efficiency and monitor the performance of each panel. The solar company was confident that their product and services would meet the expectations of the university because of their experience in the quality spectrum of solar.

Federation University was looking to put solar on their roof. These are buildings that have been around for many, many decades. What they were planning on doing was modernising their entire building and they said that part of that thing is to make sure we try and offset power consumption and greenhouse emissions. Federation University is a very large user of power. They have an incredible size mains coming in and historically they have really large bills. That was a very long project because what they did was they went to a company of environmental consultants to actually put together a plan of how to tackle their emissions. Which then resulted in us being brought in to the picture to try and see what we could offer that actually met that brief.

With the really complex roof structure that they have with sawtooth roofs with a very low pitch roof we realised all of the panels needed to be optimised so, we decided to go with optimisers and every single panel. That allows us to monitor the performance of every single panel and maximise efficiency with the panels even if there is an issue with shading over dirt or anything else. The university has been well aware of the fact that we operate in the quality spectrum of solar, and when they decided to put the tender out we were one of three businesses that bid for that tender. And with the first discussion that we had with both the organisation that was actually managing it on behalf of Federation University and with the Federation University representative, it was pretty evident that what we were offering was a high quality product.