Started in September 2019 by Yakub Ansari, Payperwatt is a solar startup that helps solar EPCs and owners to go solar without net-metering and also helps solar power plant owners to sync their plant with generators so that they can use their plant even during power outages.
With the present-day net-metering policies and delay in the net-metering process. A large PV plant owner can’t export their generated power to the grid. Hence they need to shut down their plant during low power consumption likely at weekends and off-seasons.
Also during power outages, solar power plants become useless and the whole factory loads have to be powered by generators. This increases the burden on the factory owners because they already invest a lot in solar power plants and the fuel prices are increasing drastically.
“Being in the steel industry for more than 9 years, it’s easy for me to adapt and develop in the new emerging solar industry. After two years of research and development, we developed our controller named ZED Advance.
With more than 200 hundred installations all over the world. We help hundreds of solar and generator owners to save lots of money on fuel and produce more power from their plants.” Yakub Says.
A battery-less solar power plant has a grid-tied solar inverter that generates power in synchronization with the grid. Hence it required net-metering, so that excess power can be injected back to the grid. The excess power is generated when the load demand is less than the solar power generation.
Net-meters are bidirectional energy meters that measure power flow in both directions. It adds units for the power flow from the grid to the home and subtracts from units for power flow from the home to the grid. On the other hand, normal energy meters measure power flow in one direction only any reverse direction will also add to the bill.
The unavailability of net-metering for medium and large scale solar power plants is one of the biggest hurdles in going solar for factory owners. Some factory owners install undersized PV plants and switch off their plants during less power requirement. This switching off of solar power plants increases the payback period of solar investment.
Yakub Explain “ ZED Advance is a unique 4 in one tool, it provides Zero Export, DG PV Synchronizing, Remote monitoring & Weather Monitoring solutions for Solar Power Plants.
It enables solar plant owners & operators to limit the amount of solar power that their systems export to the electricity grid or reverse back to the generator. There is a range of inverters that is compatible with the ZED Advance device and can manage Solar power production and deliver Zero Export as well as generator synchronization. It has an inbuilt remote monitoring system to monitor the performance of the solar power plant and Grid performance and also if required with the generator and weather sensors.
How to install ZED Advance?
To install ZED advance with a solar power plant, plant owners need a set of current transformers at the grid coupling point of the factory and connect their output with our device. And LAN cable to connect grid-tied solar inverters with the device as well as local internet. Once the connection is done, we take the system online and monitor the power requirement of the factory.
Factory load may vary from 5% to 20%, hence it is compulsory for us to study the factory load variation. After studying the load flow of the factory, we set the setpoints of the controller so that no excess power can be generated.
If the factory owners want to run their generator with the solar power plant. They will need another set of the current transformers at the generator and load coupling point and connect their output with our device.
Key features of ZED Advance.
The best thing about this type of net-metering less grid-tied solar power plant is that the factory owner doesn’t need any approval from any government department because they are not exporting any surplus power to the grid. The plant can start producing power from day one of its commissions because they don’t need to wait for the net-metering work.
If the plant size is like 1MW and some part of it is commissioned (let says 200 or 500kW) with the help of this device plant owners can start their commissioned plant. And they will get the benefits of the commissioned plant before the whole plant gets commissioned. One more cool thing about this device is that it also provides Remote monitoring for the solar plant and the subscription charges are included in the price of this device. So, plant owners don’t need any data logger for the monitoring of their plants
