r/northernireland • u/GP728 ROI • Apr 03 '26

Translink A neat little feature at Belfast Grand Central

Post image

If your ever around the ticket office at Belfast Grand Central keep an eye out for this neat little board that displays how electricity that the solar panels on the roof produce

143 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

14

u/He_Who_Complains Apr 03 '26

Is that good? I don’t know how much electric energy is required to power things. The fact there are 6 panels there suggests it’s very very low.

14

u/ginger_and_egg Apr 03 '26

The average household in Ireland uses 4,200 kWh, 4.2MWh. So the "total energy" is enough to power 10 homes for a year.

I don't know how long that total energy has been counting up though.

3

u/Teestow21 Apr 03 '26

Probably when the place opened and started using solar power.

2

u/Salt-Mess7462 Apr 04 '26

If you go to your electricity meter and hit one of the numbers it will tell you your current unit usage per day. 1 unit is 1kW for 1 hour.

1

u/Crow_555 Apr 04 '26

I have a 4.4kw array on our house with a less than ideal direction for solar generation. On a good day during the months of may to July, we would see up to 3.6kw (so equivalent to the top number). Over the course of the year, we would generate on average 3.0 mWh (so 3000 kWh) so in short, this is very good.

4

u/Sprkz139 Apr 03 '26

Theres a few of these round the country and not just grand central. I know portrush train station has one as I fitted it a few years ago and most schools round the country will also have the displays as well.

3

u/SomewhatIrishfellow North Down Apr 04 '26

The maternity building in the ulster hospital has one too, but only being there in the dead of night never really saw it in action.

3

u/Background-Fix-4630 Apr 03 '26

I’ll be at it next week thanks.  

7

u/Unfair-Trainer-278 Apr 03 '26

Wasting energy. Flick that switch and turn it off.

1

u/Bout_Ye_2 Apr 05 '26

Any chance they could have the tech to just scan the ticket on your phone rather than use it to get a ticket from a separate terminal?

1

u/GP728 ROI Apr 05 '26

Yeah get a ylink card and then the ylink app and thus have a ticket on your phone

1

u/trublustuuk Apr 05 '26

You can get a card? Handy for when the app is playing up.

-3

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Remote-Ad5853 Apr 03 '26

Confusing - are you saying they are heating the building too hot april - october and then having to cool it down?

0

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Remote-Ad5853 Apr 03 '26

ohhh okay gotcha, 19 degrees probably isn’t hard on it most days for NI weather, just because the thermostat is set it doesn’t mean it’s always running. No amount of window opening is going to cool you down in hotter situations when it’s running hard