All posts by jsst-admin

Jonstar has been involved with several projects at County Hall for Leicestershire
County Council – from new installations, maintenance work, and upgrades to the
existing systems that had failed.

As part of a major decarbonisation initiative in 2021, our team installed solar PV
systems across the Rutland Building South, Pen Lloyd Higher Roof, and Pen Lloyd
Lower Roof. Together, these installations total 227.25kWp and help reduce carbon
emissions by an estimated 37.04 tonnes of CO₂ every year.

We also carried out a full assessment of the existing PV systems on site. With
several inverters offline and beyond their warranty period, we proposed upgrading
the systems to SolarEdge technology. This upgrade gave a new lease of life,
improving energy output, enhancing fire safety, and extending the system warranty
to 12 years. In total, 86.45kWp of existing systems were successfully upgraded
across three arrays.

Altogether, Jonstar has now been involved in deploying and upgrading 313.7kWp of
solar PV at County Hall, Leicester.

A fantastic project to be part of – and what a great view from this drone shot!

On one of our current sites where Jonstar are installing over 300kWp of Solar PV across four new industrial units in Market Harborough, we were invited to a morning Health and Safety (SHAD) event run by the Principal Contractor, Britcon (UK) Limited. This was a free event to demonstrate, and practice emergency rescuing at height scenarios and involved the site contractors, UKWS, the Fire Service and Britcon. The site was non-operational during the event showing the commitment of Britcon to Health and Safety in the construction industry while the teams on site could benefit from some time to see how operatives are protected by collective measures such as netting under roofs and in an emergency rescued using scissor lifts, cherry pickers and ultimately if necessary the Fire Service. There was also a mobile training centre with a virtual reality simulator for operating MEWPS courtesy of Nationwide Platforms.

It’s #FeedbackFriday! This week we were sent a lovely review from a client whose 72kW system we installed nearly 3 years ago – and they’re still recommending us to this day!

“The Installation Project itself was flawless, RAMS were supplied in plenty of time, the kit was ordered in a timely fashion and installation started on the promised date. The Installation team (Jonstar) was led by Ben Tyrrell who kept us fully informed throughout the two weeks he was on site, once complete, he then took the time to complete the Solar Edge Registration for us and ensured our monitors were all working as they should.

The system continues to work with no issues as well today as it did back in Nov 2022 – We have produced 142mWh of electricity across the lifetime of the system and have seen some exceptional results for the time of year given the weather we have had.

I would strongly recommend the three companies who worked together flawlessly to ensure we received the system we needed – Save Money Cut Carbon, C-U-B and Jonstar Sustainable Technologies.”

We completed our largest array to date at a Hospital in the North East.

1520x DAS 440W Solar Panels, 4 x 100kW inverters, and 668.8kWp – that’s 668.8kWp generating 515,000kWh a year. The system is fully optimised on SolarEdge technology, fitted on a Van Der Valk flat roof system using ballasted feet rather than the standard rubber.

The annual CO2 emission saved will be 105.48 tonnes (that’s equivalent to 4,845 trees planted every year!)

This is part of a wider improvement of the site where there will also be a ground source heat pump installed.  The new plant room will also include a switch room for the inverters, which we expect to be built over the next two months. We’re all excited to continue working on this project!

Fire Safety in PV installations is a big topic right now and something that is at the top of our agenda to ensure that at Jonstar we are leading the way using all of the best technology and specialist risk assessments to ensure we design and deliver systems that provide value for money, huge savings on electric bills and peace of mind that the systems are safe.

In 2017 RC62 guidelines for fire safety in pv were developed by the RISC Authority in conjunction with the Micro Generation Certification Scheme (MCS), further to this Zurich also released a white paper on the design, installation and maintenance of solar pv systems in August 2023.  This was just after the release of the latest RC62 document in February 2023.  These are all guidelines released by important stakeholders in the PV industry; however, they aren’t the regulations that the industry must abide by below:

• MIS3002 The Solar PV Standard (Installation) 
• IET Code of Practice for Grid-connected Solar Photovoltaic Systems (referred to within this document as the IET PV Code of Practice)
• BS7671 IET Wiring Regulations Eighteenth Edition

At Jonstar we apply the regulations and advise on the guidelines to try and ensure that each installation has a well balanced approach between what’s feasible to achieve once the potential array, safety and cost have been assessed.

Typically, Jonstar install SolarEdge on sites due to the advanced fire safety features compared with standard string inverters.  The system has optimisers protecting each panel on the roof and controlling the output.  The system has rapid shutdown, so each string drops below 30 volts within 30 seconds by the optimisers throttling the output of each panel to 1 volt.

Rapid shutdown is activated by thermal detection of temperatures above 85 degrees at the optimisers on the roof, loss of power to the inverter (at any isolation point) and if an arc fault is detected.  Monitoring of the system can be done remotely even down to panel level.  Additionally, a Firefighter Gateway can be installed linked to the inverters and the fire alarm system via an interface for automatic or manual shutdown of the system in the event there is a fire.  The Gateway displays the string voltages and the operational status of the system so that the fire service can clearly see if SafeDC has been activated.  Because DC Isolation is achieved electronically on the roof via the optimisers there is also no requirement for rotary DC Isolators that contribute to the majority of Solar PV fires.