Commercial & Industrial

1.5 MW rooftop solar project powered by FIMER in Australia

FIMER technology helps one of Australia’s leading property groups to do things differently.

Frasers Property Industrial, a strategic business unit of SGX-listed Frasers Property Limited, creates and manages industrial and logistics facilities, warehouses and commercial offices in Australia and Europe. 

It is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and future-proofing its properties with many whole of business sustainability targets with the aim to be net-zero carbon by 2030. 

These targets include achieving 5 Stars on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) by FY24, have all new projects be certified using third parties and relevant green building programs from FY21 and 80% of owned and managed assets certified by FY24. 

With these market-leading sustainability targets in place, Frasers Property Industrial is continuously looking at ways to deliver direct and tangible benefits to their customers that reduce total occupancy costs. 

As part of that, they engaged leading solar engineering company Smart Commercial Solar to support them to design, install and commission a 1.5 MW (megawatt) rooftop solar plant at one of their newly built commercial properties in Horsley Park in Sydney, NSW, Australia.

The 1.5 MW solar project only took 12 weeks to complete. It required the solution to be split into three 500 kW subsystems to meet the sites metering and electrical infrastructure and would allow the site to be split into three different tenancies in the future if needed with a solar system for each. 

The system is comprised of 12 FIMER PVS-100 three-phase string inverters which were installed and commissioned on a custom-built inverter station. Smart Commercial Solar also utilised a helicopter to air-lift over 3,700 405W Trina solar panels onto the rooftop of the building where they were installed and commissioned. 
 
Huon Hoogesteger, Managing Director of Smart Commercial Solar, explains why FIMER inverter technology was his technology of choice for this project: “The FIMER PVS-100 fits perfectly for the MV (medium voltage) system size of this project. It is easy to install and fits within the inverter station that was specially designed and engineered by our team.” 

He further adds: “We know we can count on FIMER to support us throughout the life of this system based on previous experience. FIMER has been a strong partner in the past. They are a great choice for large commercial applications.” 

FIMER’s PVS-100 inverter technology offers high power density dual-stage topology, which reduces the number of inverters required for a project, as the inverter can generate stronger energy production. This results in faster installation times, lower installation costs and reduced maintenance costs in the long term. 

Thanks to FIMER’s Aurora Vision Plant Management Platform, the entire system can be monitored and managed remotely.

Jason Venning, FIMER Australia’s Country Manager, said of the project, “Smart Commercial Solar is dedicated to delivering quality solar installations for their customers such as the Frasers Property project. We are proud to have a long history in supporting them by providing FIMER’s leading inverter technology and expertise.”

The 1.5 MW rooftop solar system contributed to Frasers Property Industrial achieving a 5-star Green Star rating for the new property where the system will produce approximately 2 GWh annually which equates to an emission reduction of over 1,500 metric tonnes of CO2 per year. 

By incorporating solar into their commercial properties, it enables them to retail carbon neutral electricity to their tenants through Real Utilities, their own energy retail company.