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S-5! rail free systems
PRODUCTS and SERVICES INSTALLING PANELS WITHOUT RAILS: YES IT CAN BE DONE
S-5! solar attachment solutions can be found on some of the world’s largest buildings including the corporate headquarters of Apple, Google, IBM, NATO and NREL. Here in Australia the technology has been used on five Costco stores, and the company is eyeing up more opportunities in the region.
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BELOW: 250kWp of S-5! direct attach mounting system in a short-bed pickup HAVE YOU EVER HEARD of installing solar panels without rails? Well, it is possible, and S-5! Metal Roof Innovations first created the new market and its own category of engineered, manufactured metal roof attachments in 1992. In the years since, S-5! has been used to mount more than 2GW of metal-roof solar arrays globally.
The US-based company recently introduced its solar attachment technology to the Australian market, doing away with the need for anodised aluminium rails and facilitating more cost-effective and less complicated installations with its PVKIT™ 2.0 fastening system.
Vice President of Research & Development, Dustin Haddock, is leading S-5!’s efforts in Australia and throughout the region. He has been working with installers and EPCs to increase awareness of its PVKIT which provides a rail-free approach on standing seam, concealed-fix and exposed-fix metal roofs.
Featuring just three components, the US-made PVKIT enables solar installers to fix solar panels directly onto the metal roof with S-5!’s clamps and brackets. The PVKIT’s pre-assembled components considerably reduce installation time and cost for PV mounting by eliminating the need for an elaborate rail system, while also providing better load distribution into the roof and substructure.
“Having been in the business for nearly 30 years, S-5! understands the load carrying capabilities of a metal roof and sees little need for the PV industry’s convention of using rails on metal roofs,” says Haddock.
“In most cases, there is no need to put a rail on a roof because the ribs, corrugations or seams can carry loads just as rails do, so the PVKIT marries the modules directly to the roof. We have only to lay modules in landscape orientation – 90º to the roof’s own inherent rails.”
Site visit
Haddock conducted a site visit in New Zealand with one of its solar installers and distributors who recently completed a project using the PVKIT. He and Bernie Dombroski, Managing Director of Solar PartnersNZ, an S-5! distributor, spent two hours with installer, Lightforce Managing Director, Luke Nutting and his team laying down modules and explaining how to fix the modules.
“We just used our first S-5! rail-less system on a 100kW commercial solar job in Auckland,” said Nutting. “Once we got a hang of how the system worked, which was picked up very quickly by the whole team, we were installing rows of 17 panels in around 21 minutes, that’s one module every 74 seconds.
“This sort of efficiency and speed is absolutely game changing for the solar industry – not only does it dramatically increase labour efficiency, but it delivers around 20 per cent cost savings on rail framing and 85 per cent reduction in weight. The installation team was blown away with the system and never want to use rail ever again!”
Lower added load is helpful as an existing building may not have been designed to carry much additional weight. Haddock says that the S-5! mountings result in a weight of roughly 1.5kg/kWp compared with 8-10 kg/kWp for a railed mounting structure, not to mention 25 per cent more uniform wind and dead-load distribution.
“Another advantage is simplicity of installation,” says Haddock. “Whereas most rail systems require 8 or 10 components, S-5! requires only three. The ‘direct-attach’ method also enables greater flexibility in module layout and placement.
“Still another facet is the storage, transport and jobsite logistics costs and hassles of traditional rail mounting. With S-5! on a residential job of 6-8 kWp, all mounting goods can go to the site and up the ladder in a bucket along with all the tools needed for the install – just a gun and one or two driver tips.”
S-5! manufactures its products in the US in its own ISO-certified manufacturing facility and has distributors in Sydney, Melbourne and Hamilton: Rapid Systems Solutions (RSS), owned by No. 1 Roofing and Building Supplies, MAK Fastener Specialists, and Solar PartnersNZ.
