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Solar Energy News

Good Morning from Lagos

The silence is deafening

2 kw in Alasia
Wires have been tidied and tucked away

This is my 7th day in (9/13/2014) Lagos. I arrived last Saturday. As they say the more things change the more they stay the same. Our clearing agent is still as bad as ever. Greedy, lacks a concept of customer service and believes that people who come from America must be extorted. Please avoid Jide Josef at all costs.

The good news is that our HP series are performing beyond our expectation. The weakness of our installations so far has been batteries. To get the best results we have switched to the Trojan batteries. They require a lot more care but are designed for the deep discharge and recharge that a solar powered home experiences.

We have replaced two of the systems we installed on our last visit and will be replacing another 3 starting on Monday. We are very excited at the possibilities and capabilities the HP series affords our clients.
It comes with a very powerful charger. This charger equalizes the batteries so that the voltage in all the batteries are the same. It has the ability to regulate input voltage. PHCN provided wildly fluctuating voltage. From as low as 65 V to as high as 295 volts. A lot of people in the area suffered damage to their appliances as a result. Our system refused to connect the house to PHCN and ran on Solar during that period. For us that is a huge plus. For the last 2 days there has been no grid power. I suspect a bad transformer. The folks on Solar, have power.
We will continue to update you as to our progress.

Enjoy the video of the 2 kw system running on 2 Trojan 12 V 205 AH batteries.It pumped water (2 hp

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Solar Energy News

The importance of Cables for your Inverter

A lot of you reading this note, have Inverters installed in your homes. These inverters store energy from the grid in the batteries and when the power from the grid goes out they power your appliances and lights.

They are a worthy solution

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Solar Energy News

Magodo Home on a 3kw Solar System

Solar power Lagos Nigeria
This is a solar power system we installed in a Magodo, Lagos home on Thursday July 3rd. It first full test was on the 4th of July. They did not have electricity from 11 am and it was not the brightest day. But it did its job till about 9:45 pm before the low battery warning came on. That will be remedied with the addition of more batteries. System should have 8 batteries. It currently has 4. This morning July 5 the generator was turned off at 545 am. We are running on batteries. Everything is still on. Security lights, two refrigerators, one deep freezer, assorted lights and TV’s. When it lightens up our panels should produce enough electricity to replenish the batteries. We are currently using 1.17Kw. The Sun should help us sustain that usage or we will quickly run out of stored power (in the 4 batteries).

Enjoy the video

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Solar Energy News

Update from our month in Nigeria

Happy Astrea at work

We arrived with the expectation that our systems will be delivered within a week of our arrival. It is one month later and we don’t have them. We have stopped believing in the promises are waiting for the good to be delivered. Our Chief Technical Office Astrea Essandoh came in on Wednesday morning from Ghana. We had hoped to start installations on Wednesday evening.

We have been visiting prospective customers and the demand is there. What people need are reliable systems that will work. The reason a lot of the systems are not performing up to expectation is because of substandard installations. Panels installed in an area with shade. Panels not getting direct access to the sun. We have seen so many bad installations but we want to bring you a success story.

We went to visit a home in shogunle, we saw with Solar panels on the roof. The homeowner self installed the system, Everything cost him a little over $13,000 (1.8 million naira).

He has 16 240 W panels 24 2 Volt batteries, 1 6KW Inverter and an outback 50amp MPPT charge controller. He has had the system for 9 months and can be completely off the grid if he chooses to. He can run every thing in his home, washing machine, AC, big refrigerator, Water chiller, his fans and lights. He barely runs the batteries down during the night. One day last week his 3.8KW system produced 3.5 KW. That is impressive when you consider that a system can suffer up to 20% in efficiency losses.

He produces more power than he will ever use.

I have enclosed pictures of his system for you to see.

3.8KW
3.8KW
Fuel Tank
Fuel Tank
Production
Charge Contoller

Update: Yesterday 6/23/2014 We took delivery of our systems and started installing. We completed our first at 26 Alasia Village Compound. Tonight we are running on Solar.

 

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Solar Energy News

How Does Solar Energy Work? (Video)

A short Video that answer some questions about Solar Energy .

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Solar Energy News

Our Prices are going up in May 2014

The buzz around our products has been very high. The demand has been very strong and with that in mind we are making some improvements to our offering.

Starting on May 1 the systems will come with installed solar panels equivalent to the system label. Our current 1KW systems comes with 800 Watts in panels. The new upgrade will come will the full 1KW. The 1KW system will be priced at $3499.00 before installation compared to $2999.00

We created a new flash animation ad that we are excited about. Please share your thoughts.

318x308update

I saw a slogan today and it said

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Solar Energy News

Myths about Solar

Q. We see street lights that don’t work. Why would my solar installation work?
A. Street lights are exposed to many conditions your home installation are not exposed to. 1. Vandalism: People destroy them by accident (cars run into them), people steal the batteries. 2. The installation was not done properly. 3. The street lights were of sub standard quality. 4. The lights purchased were not designed for the environment they were installed in.

Q. Solar is very expensive. For the money I can buy generators or an inverter.
A. Relative to either, Solar power is more expensive when you consider the initial outlay of money. When you have to operate them then the Solar system comes into it’s own. A generator has moving parts and requires fuel to run. A 3 Kva generator consumes 2.2 to 3 liters of fuel an hour. If you run it for an average of 8 hours a day, you are consuming 16 liters of fuel a day. At N100 per liter that is N1600 per day for fuel. You do that everyday for 1 year your cost is [b]N584,000[/b]. Add the cost of repairs and service and your generator costs closer to N650,000 per year not including the purchase price. Your inverter is a great system as long as you get power from the grid for a few hours a day. If your experience is similar to what is currently in Nigeria, then you need a generator to charge your Inverter. Lets say you charge the inverter by running the generator for four hours day, that Inverter now costs you N292,000 per year in addition to the purchase cost. A solar installation that will power the same equivalent as your generator will cost you about N550,000. Your cost to run it is N0. It will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All it needs as fuel is sunshine. In Nigeria we have sunshine in abundance. It has no moving parts and requires no maintenance.

solar with pole

 

Q. Is solar reliable:
A. Yes it is very reliable. The first solar panels were installed in the US in the 1950’s and some of them are still generating electricity today. The US space program has satellites and orbiters that were launched in the 70’s that are still aloft today. They are powered with solar. Because Solar powered systems have very few moving parts they can last a very long time. Solar panels can last 25 years or more. The inverters and other systems can last longer than 10 years if properly taken care of

.

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Solar Energy News

How are we doing?

Join us: We are off to a good start

Ann, Luca, Chris & Jeff
Ann, Luca, Chris & Jeff

As we begin the second quarter it is hard to believe the progress we have made.

On the staffing side, we hired Astrea Essandoh from Ghana to be our Chief Technical officer. He will oversea and have the responsibilities of managing our installations in Nigeria. He has NABCEP training and he has installed a few Wind and Solar systems in the United States and in Ghana. We are currently interviewing sales people to staff our office in Ladipo, Lagos.

Atlantic Waste & Power is the official factory representative of Senwei Energy Technologies in Africa and North America. They manufacture one of the best selling small wind turbine in Europe. They have UL, CE, TUV, IEC and other top certifications. This makes them one of the few manufacturers that can sell systems on every continent. We are receiving calls from Nigeria and Europe from people interested in purchasing their systems. We are listed on their website as official representative.

A.W.P.S visited to the North American Factory for SIEL. They are a manufacturer of residential and Industrial grade Inverters. They are headquartered in Italy and opened the factory in Parsipanny NJ last year. Luca Arcioni the sales manager was happy to welcome us and looks forward to building a small utility scale project with us in Nigeria.

The story of how we got started was featured in an online publication called Africa Business Jump Start. We got very good press, a few phone calls and a lot of emails. People were inspired by our story. The magazine gets over 500,000 visitors a month. It is a good resource for people who want to start a business in Africa. You can read the article here.

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Solar Energy News

Our New Video

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Solar Energy News

We are the North American and Africa distributor of Senwei Energy Wind Turbines

We are pleased to announce that Atlantic Waste & Power System is the factory approved exclusive distributor of Senwei Energy Technologies Wind turbines in Africa and North America.
Our excellent record and customer support model made this very possible. We are pleased to welcome Senwei to the family.
Atlantic Waste and Power System with offices in Sparta, NJ and Lagos Nigeria specializes in Solar and Wind Power Solutions.

Senwei Energy Technologies Technologies, Inc established in 1996, is one of the leading manufacturers of small wind turbine generators in China and Germany. We specialize in the manufacture of 300W to 50KW wind turbine generators, grid tie inverter, small wind turbines/solar hybrid system, solar power,hydraulic tower, fixed pitch wind turbine, variable pitch wind turbine, grid off system ,grid on system for the world market. www.hywindturbine.com
www.hywindturbine.com/contact/