Meralli prides itself on operating on a triple bottom line, but do we honestly stack up with our aim of balancing business success with environmental sustainability and social responsibility?
Meralli’s End-of-Year Newsletter
As we all start to think about the end of year and the chance to take a bit of a break and reset, much has happened over the past couple of months …
Completion of Bell Bay SF
Alongside our partners Climate Capital we completed the 8.5 MW DC/4.95 MW AC solar farm at Bell Bay. The project used a Sungrow SG4950 inverter, JA Solar 555w panels and for the first time in Australia, we used special screw anchor rods designed and supplied by Jurchen Tech in areas of the site where soil conditions required a different approach. The style of anchor road opens up additional soil types for suitability with the PEG substructure meaning it’s becoming an even more attractive option in the Australian market. It’s not our first build in Tasmania, but certainly the largest so far.
Maintenance Robots are Go!
Behind the scenes at Meralli over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on getting our remote control skills up to scratch thanks to the purchase of remote-controlled electric mowing and panel cleaning solutions.
On the vegetation management side, we opted for a Raymo solution, pictured below during initial trials at the Junee Solar Farm site. While the technology is not 100% where we’d like it to be (ie fully autonomous) we’re happy with the results it gives us (and our clients). It means that we can provide O&M support for vegetated sites which extends the benefits of the PEG solution (energy density, low CAPEX, etc) into new potential locations and use cases (particularly in agribusiness).
On the array cleaning side, we invested in a SolarCleano M1 (above). This is also electric, can clean both wet and dry, and will come into its own on solar developments where batteries are involved and optimising energy output is essential. This machine is accredited for PEG but equally capable on large-scale, rooftop, fixed tilt, and trackers.
Please give us a call if you are interested in talking about cleaning/vegetation management with truly green technology.
Our mates at Jurchen Tech, down under!
We had a great couple of days showing our friends at Jurchen Tech some of our work in late November. We covered more than 1300km over three-day visit, starting in Sydney and finishing in Brisbane via Moree and Goondiwindi. It the first opportunity we’ve had to take Jurchen Tech’s CEO Michael Jurchen and Herbert Heidel (European Sales) alongside Christian Koch (Partner at Lafayette Mittelstand Capital) to check our builds up close and personal and we loved having them here. The first stop on the trip was for some Australian safety headwear (thanks for the Akubras Assef’s Moree) and then onto Wathagar, Chillamurra and Latitude Solar Farms.
End of Year break.
We’re officially pulling up stumps for the end-of-year break at COB on Friday, December 15 and back at work on Monday, January 8. We’ll see you in 2024!
– Ed, Director – Business Development
