Hot water on the Cape Verde islands

We can report on an exciting overseas project on the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic. A hotel complex on the island Santiago can now benefit from its sun-blessed location and can optimally use the self-generated photovoltaic power for the hotel business. Cape Verde represents an excellent location, with significantly more hours of sunshine and almost balanced solar radiation all year round, including the angle of incidence of the sun. These are absolutely perfect conditions for using the power of the sun also for the heating area.

In cooperation with the Swiss company meierelektro ag we have already implemented a number of projects with the Solar Manager and the AC•THOR 9s – so far only in Switzerland.

Since the previous optimizations in combination with the solution with the Solar Manager and the AC•THOR 9s worked perfectly, the solution was also ready to be tested in the much sunnier location in the West of Africa, on Cape Verde.

The set-up in the hotel

With a total of 28 double rooms, there is a high amount of hot water requirement by the hotel guests. For this reason, the hotel complex requires two electric hot water boilers, each with a capacity of 2,000 litres; these are only intelligently controlled by the two AC•THOR 9s and supplied with surplus electricity from the photovoltaic system.

In this case, the water treatment system is operated with the hotel's own photovoltaic electricity as a second priority in addition to the hotel consumers during the day. As a third prioritization, excess is then used for hot water preparation, i.e. to heat the hot water during the day.

On the few days with too little photovoltaic yield, the AC•THOR 9s' tried-and-tested hot water backup can cover the required amount of energy with the regular public power grid and thus ensure that hotel guests can enjoy a warm shower. This is especially necessary at times when a lot of hot water is needed within a short period of time, such as in the evening.

The distance to the set-up is not an obstacle, as it is guaranteed that the settings can also be changed remotely. Thanks to the cloud solution from Solar Manager, as well as from my-PV, the settings for hot water temperature or a possible hot water backup can be configured from anywhere in the world.

Feedback from the customers

The operators of the hotel facility are very satisfied and are considering a further expansion of the photovoltaic system and the heating areas in the next years. Chances are that this implementation will also be realized in other hotels.

Also the implementing company, the Swiss company meierelektro ag, is definitely convinced of the joint solution of Solar Manager and my-PV. "The compatibility works well and - this was shown in this project - the remote maintenance or the possibility of remote setting from Switzerland is a cost-saving and very practical feature via the cloud. The AC•THOR 9s also works in a hotel complex in the West of Africa – even when the hotel complex is in full operation,” concludes the managing director of meierelektro ag.

Read more here.