Nixon Hire in the Frame
10 May 2022
A new addition in Nixon Hire’s environmentally friendly equipment fleet is the Solar Smart Frame which has been developed in association with AJC EasyCabin.
“Many companies are putting solar panels on the roof of welfare cabins and site accommodation units but they are always fixed flat,” Nick Hibbard, UK division manager for renewables at Nixon Hire tells me. “That means that you can’t always obtain optimum performance from them.
“We decided to develop a steel frame that fixes on to the twist-locks of any 32ft welfare unit, and it can be positioned when the unit is delivered by a Hiab. This avoids any manual working at height.
“The system includes a micro-inverter, an energy meter and a four-position push-button control to adjust the angle of the panels according to the season for the maximum solar gain. In the summer months this can give a 35 per cent increase over having the panel laid flat. A telematics system is also being developed to alter this automatically.
“In high winds the system will automatically adjust and lie back down,” adds Nick. “And it’s all plug-and-play with no hard-wiring necessary.”
The solar frame system can produce up to 6kW of solar array and it can be linked back to a Solar Pod hybrid solar generator. This has an inverter and a battery bank, enabling any surplus capacity to be stored.
The innovation was demonstrated on Nixon Hire’s stand at ScotPlant in Edinburgh last month. The installation, shown on the 32ft site office to the left of the picture, comprised five Solar Smart Frames, each with three solar panels.
When the sun was shining – which it was for most of the two-day exhibition – the solar panels were providing all the power required by the cabin, which had two oil-filled heaters, a water boiler and LED lighting. An app shows how much solar power is being harvested in real time, and the amount being drawn by the battery or backup generator.
“In a setup with multiple site units, the Solar Smart Frame might be mounted on the canteen,” says Nick. “If it is drawing only 3kW, the remaining 3kW will be fed back to the inverter and the battery bank. If the battery bank is full, that extra capacity can be fed to one of the other cabins.
“Our specialist team can monitor the performance of an installation, alerting the site manager about issues like low fuel levels, battery condition or overloading and we can reset the parameters remotely if needed,” said Nick. “Customers can also monitor the site themselves via the software.
The system can also be installed on the ground as a free-standing unit.
“Even when construction sites were running on red diesel, we were helping customers save money by using battery and solar installations. Now with the change to white diesel and rising fuel costs, the reductions are even greater,” added Nick.
