An industrial ruin turned into a solar power plant: The Calvörde solar farm rests on Schletter mounting systems
In cooperation with the company Solar WO Engineering GmbH, Schletter built this 4.7 MWp solar farm for the EPC contractor Solarcentury (London, UK). At the city limits of Calvörde, an industrial ruin of a former state-owned company had been an eyesore for decades. Not surprisingly, the city council was very interested in finding a reasonable use for this area. Now, this target could be achieved by building the solar farm. “Even in difficult market situations – and Germany is one of the most challenging solar markets right now – solar projects are feasible if you have the right partners”, says Frans van den Heuvel, the CEO of Solarcentury.
Before the construction works could begin, the abandoned halls and buildings had to be pulled down and residual waste had to be disposed of. After that, 18,216 modules were installed on Schletter PvMax-S3V-Kombi and FS Duo3V-Kombi racks within a period of only 5 weeks. As the solar park was built on a land conversion area, PvMax-S was the fastening system of choice. The foundation of ground-mounted solar plants on concrete foundations is an efficient way of installing solar plants on subsoils that do not allow pile-driving. This also includes areas with chemically aggressive subsoils, as a foundation using driven piles made of steel is not recommendable there due to the high risk of corrosion. PvMax-S combines the well-proven Schletter system FS Duo with concrete foundations.
The solar farm has already been connected to the local power grid. The generated power is sufficient to supply about 1,100 four-person households.
