Scottish Maritime Museum Engineers Green Credentials

Ceiba Renewables have installed an 8.04kWp Sunpower solar PV system at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine, Ayrshire. The system will generate in excess of 6,800kWh a year that will supply power to run their offices, workshops and the museum itself.

The Maritime Museum holds an important nationally recognised collection, encompassing a variety of historic ships, artefacts, shipbuilding machinery, machine tools, and fascinating personal items. Many of these exhibits can be found inside the Linthouse Building in Irvine, a unique Grade A listed, 19th—century historic building known as the Linthouse Engine Shop ‘Cathedral of Engineering’.

The solar PV installation uses the most advanced solar PV technology which was chosen by the Scottish Maritime Museum in order to deliver maximum solar yields and unprecedented durability.

The PV system utilises Sunpower X21 335W all-black panels and SolarEdge power optimiser inverter technology. Sunpower’s X21 series of panels hold the world-record for efficiency of any commercially available panel and uses their Maxeon technology which delivers superior performance and greatly enhanced durability over conventional solar PV panels. The SolarEdge power optimiser technology further improves the yield of the PV system, gives firefighter safe isolation of each solar panel and provides detailed monitoring so that should a fault ever develop it can be identified and fixed quickly and with minimal hassle.

Chris Woodland, Commercial Manager at the Scottish Maritime Museum said:

“We are always looking for ways to minimise our operational expenses without impacting on the visitor experience and this is an excellent example of the Scottish Maritime Museum’s dedication to improving its energy efficiency”

Duncan Crosthwaite, Director at Ceiba Renewables said: “The Scottish Maritime Museum had some very specific design considerations as the building is part of a conservation area and we wanted to maximise the available roof space while keeping within planning requirements. In addition to this, the panels needed to be able to withstand the harsh coastal weather conditions. Therefore the Sunpower X21 all-black 335W panels are the perfect solution. The 335W panels look great, give fantastic performance and are extremely durable meaning they’ll give high yields year after year.”

Such is the reliability and performance of Sunpower’s silicon cells that they are being used by the likes of the Solar Impulse 2 which is the first airplane travelling around the world solely powered by the sun and, of more relevance to the Scottish Maritime Museum, the catamaran MS Tûranor PlanetSolar is the first vessel to sail around the world powered completely by solar power. You can read more about MS Tûranor PlanetSolar here: https://global.sunpower.com/solar-case-studies/planet-solar-boat/

You can find out more about the Scottish Maritime Museum, the events they hold and the fantastic work they do in the community here: https://scottishmaritimemuseum.org