2 day Solar PV Installer & Designer Course

The following content is covered during the two day course.

1. Introduction
   1. What is happening locally with PV installations
   2. Local installation statistics
2. Irradiation
   1. The sun as resource and the solar constant
   2. Sun hours per day
   3. Efficiency comparison PV vs Solar Water Heating
3. PV Technology
   1. Performance growth and development of PV since the 1950’s
   2. Manufacturing processes
   3. Which technologies are available locally? Thin film, Mono & Poly crystalline
   4. Series and parallel configuration
   5. Fuse calculation
   6. Effect of temperature on solar PV
4. Cable calculations
   1. Volt drop
5. Earthing & SPD’s
   1. SPD, LPD’s & Earthing
6. Inverters
   1. Micro, String, Hybrid, Off-grid and bi-directional chargers
7. Mounting structures
8. Batteries
   1. Charging and discharging
   2. Fuses or circuit breakers
   3. Prospective Short Circuit Current in batteries
   4. Insulating battery banks
   5. Sizing busbars
   6. Off-Grid systems (basic system architecture) and calculation of a battery bank
9. Fuses vs circuit breakers in DC circuits
10. Balance of System
    1. Solar cable
    2. MC4 couplers and terminations
11. Standards
    1. SABS & IEC
12. When PV goes wrong – avoid making these mistakes

As part of a short practical we do the following tests on PV modules during the 2 day course

1. Irradiation test using a Metrel A1378, Seaward Solar irradiation tester or a similar type tester.
2. Impact of temperature on module voltage
3. Impact of temperature on module current
4. Impact of cell temperature during shading of cells
5. DC Arc test with voltages as high as 100 – 200VDC