Three Firms Advance Solar Inverters

Three firms have made announcements that further the evolution toward 1500 volt inverters within solar infrastructure.

GE Energy Management Power Conversion  has signed a supply agreement with Next Era Energy to deploy 1500V inverter solutions to solar plants generating more than 1 GW of electricity across the United States, , according to pv-magazine.com. GE Energy Management will provide 2 MW and 4 MW LV5 15000 central inverters at the installations. The increase in voltages will accelerate cost reductions.

The increased voltages enable a power station’s rating to double, the story said. This decreases loss and lowers balance of system (BoS) costs. The 4 MW systems reduce the total number of inverters necessary, which saves time and capital and operational expenses.

Suntech, a Chinese firm, said that it will unveil 1500 V modules at the Solar Power International exhibition in Anaheim, CA, this week. The devices will officially be launched next month.

A third piece of news in the inverter sector is from an Israeli company. SolarEdge Technologies claims that its HD-Wave inverter technology will use advanced digital processing to reduce the size of an inverter’s magnetics and increase reliability and performance.