Our definition of an institution is a place that hosts or accommodates more than twenty people at the same time. These include schools, colleges, hotels, lodges, hospitals and the like.
Institutions have very varied power/energy requirements depending on the level of activities going on. In a school/college set up for instance, lighting at night for classes and hostels is a must. Others like hotels and hospital require power throughout the day for applications such as cooking, sterilization etc. Needless to say, a huge chunk of the recurrent expenditure by most institutions is through electricity bills. In addition, power supply must be stable and reliable to ensure operations are not unnecessarily interrupted.
At Trusun, we work with institutions to design and implement power projects to fully serve their needs. This is through a three-tier approach:
- As backup
- Autonomous/primary supply
- Excess energy management
The backup aspect is when an institution desires to mitigate the effects of blackouts from the national grid. A solar power system, in this case, is installed with enough battery reserve to support all appliances for the desired backup time. The backup time could be anywhere from a few hours to several a days. In the event of a blackout, the energy stored in the battery bank is automatically and seamlessly fed to the loads.
Autonomous/primary power supply: In this case, the institution gets its power primarily through solar. The grid acts as a backup for the solar system. The beauty with this kind of configuration is that the number of days of autonomy considered can be significantly less / few. This is as opposed to when no grid power is available. Please note that with or without the grid, we can still design and install a solar power system for you.
Excess energy management: This presents a scenario whereby an institution installs more solar capacity than they can use and any given time. This means there will be surplus energy generated by the solar array. In the past, this surplus energy would basically be idle and effectively wasted. 
However, with the energy sector and the policy framework increasingly changing, it is now possible to have net metering agreements with power companies i.e. those that operate the national grid. Net metering allows the excess energy/power generated to be fed back to the national grid and power from the national grid allowed into the institution if there is a deficit. At the agreed bills paying intervals, the net of supply is checked and credits issued or payments done accordingly.
A solar power system with net metering can actually be fully done without batteries. This means the loads will fall back to the national grid at night or when no solar power is generated during the day. This kind of configuration best suits institutions where the load profile peaks during the day or is balanced at night and during the day.
For more information get in touch with Sales or Technical support