Car rental company goes green
The expected gross savings on electricity over the 25-year lifespan of the solar power plant equate to R28 million.
FIRST Car Rental has installed its first solar power plant at First Car Rental Pomona, cementing its continued commitment to reducing its environmental impact.
The solar power plant is located across three large rooftops containing 415 photovoltaic (PV) panels (of 320 watts ea.), which will produce on average 226.8 MWh of electricity per annum.
The installation company, SolarXgen, started building the solar power plant in November 2016 and took three weeks to complete the project.
The solar power plant is linked to the power mains via an inverter and offsets the power normally consumed from the utility company. This system does not store power – all the power generated from the PV system is used on-site.
The plant continuously runs in tandem with the utility power grid. During the day, when the solar system outputs power, it becomes the primary provider and the utility is secondary.
Says Wayne de Jager, executive director and co-founder of SolarXgen (South Africa), “The solar power system is monitored via Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) control system and a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). These systems allow remote monitoring and reporting. Our management system is able to match PV output to the building’s energy demand, ensuring optimally timed consumption.”
As electricity costs continue to rise, solar power is becoming a more viable and cost-effective solution. The installation of the solar power plant at First Car Rental Pomona will elicit an average monthly saving of 52.9 per cent on the cost of electricity. The expected gross savings on electricity over the 25-year lifespan of the solar power plant equates to R28 million.
Over the guaranteed portion of the plant’s lifetime, First Car Rental will be reducing its carbon footprint by 4 964 tons of CO².
Says Melissa Storey, executive head: Strategy, Development and Marketing at First Car Rental, “Over the years, First Car Rental has initiated many environmentally-friendly projects that still exist today. These include, but are not limited to, various energy and water-saving initiatives, saving tens of thousands of litres of water and reducing our carbon emissions by 44 tons per annum.”
