Solar Power World - OCTOBER 2011

October 2011 www.solarpowerworldonline.com

Technology • Development • Installation

INSIDE: >> BREAKTHROUGHS PAGE 14

>> MANUFACTURING PROCESSES PAGE 26

>> INSTALLATION PRACTICES PAGE 46

Managing

Risk with model-based simulations PAGE 38

Premiere Issue Solar Power International • Dallas, TX • See us at booth 4147 SOLAR COV OCT FINAL.indd 1

5/11/17 5:16 PM

Big wave surfer.

SolarWorld Authorized Installer.

Work-life balance achieved.

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Partnering with America’s largest solar panel manufacturer allows Kohl to chase big waves and spread his passion for solar. Find out how becoming a SolarWorld Authorized Installer can help you achieve a work-life balance at

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The IA3341 Series

Rcore Software Platform Moxa’s Rcore ready-to-run platform makes it easy for programmers to develop embedded software. Rcore includes easy-to-use application libraries, tested bug-free sample code, and requires less time for the concept validation and development cycle enabling a faster time-to-market that meets or exceeds customer requirements. The Rcore Community also offers our partners easy access to software and technical knowledge about embedded systems, along with an interactive forum to share knowledge with embedded computing professionals.

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T HE

FI RS T

WORD

Get Serious About Solar

W

What do you think?

Discuss this, and other solar issues at www.engineering exchange.com

elcome to the inaugural edition of Solar Power World. We’ll be exploring all aspects of the solar industry with a focus on sharing information, trends and case histories that help you make your business profitable.

This is a pivotal time for the solar industry. The technical and business innovations are coming on almost a daily basis, and the industry is poised to grow rapidly in the coming years.

That will only happen if the United States gets serious about solar. The industry is starting to grow (even in some states like New Jersey that would not traditionally be thought of as solar-powered states). Government subsidies, though not as generous as their Chinese and European counterparts, have given the industry a start in the highly competitive global solar market.

But the United States’ industry is still in its infancy, and people like California Rep. Darryl Issa are already predicting its demise. Like any other infant, the solar industry needs to be fed, but subsidies designed to nurture the industry to adolescence are now in danger of being yanked away. That would be foolish and shortsighted.

The reason our competitors such as Germany, Italy, India and China have thriving solar markets is the support companies received from their governments.

It’s true that Germany and Italy are cutting back on their subsidies now, but it’s after they’ve already created a thriving industry. We’re not there in the United States yet, and that’s why subsidies must remain — at least for now.

Thankfully, the United States has some of the most resilient entrepreneurs in the world, and they won’t be destroyed by some of the uncertainty surrounding government policies. I, for one, am excited about the opportunity to cover this growing industry from the beginning. There is a buzz about solar energy that is palpable, and we plan on being in the middle of it all.

A top-notch editorial advisory board replete with forward-thinking leaders will guide the topic selections. They’ll ensure we stay on track to bring you timely and actionable information. Each issue will provide the information that will help you understand and compete in the industry. We will report on the latest technological developments, present insights into the latest business trends and dig below the surface of a story to find the information you need.

Our core competency lies in embracing communication technology. We realize the magazine is one part of the information. That’s why it’s critical that we put together must-see content.

We will be an advocate for the industry when possible, its conscience when necessary and its leading information source at all times. And we will not waver from our commitment to you to ensure your voices are heard. That’s our mission — and my imperative.

So check us out in all our formats and give us your feedback. If you do that, I’ll enjoy helping you move the industry forward.

Frank Andorka Editorial Director fandorka@wtwhmedia.com

www.solarpowerworldonline.com

First Word 10-11 Vs3.indd 3

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SOLAR power WORLD

3

10/10/11 9:25 AM

ASO FSO

Solar Fuse and Fuseholder Combo

gPV

October 2011 • vol 1 no 1 EDITORIAL

SALES

Editorial Director

Key Account Manager

Frank Andorka • 440.234.4531 x110 fandorka@wtwhmedia.com

Jim Powers • 312.925.7793 jpowers@wtwhmedia.com

Assistant Editor

Regional Sales Manager

Kathie Zipp • 440.234.4531 x107 kzipp@wtwhmedia.com

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Director, Creative Services

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New MEDIA/WEB/Business Dev

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SVP Online Media

Todd Tidmore • 512.426.2378 ttidmore@wtwhmedia.com

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ACCOUNTING Web Development Manager B. David Miyares • 440.234.4531 x105 dmiyares@wtwhmedia.com Business Development Manager

CORPORATE

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Publisher

Community Manager Lance Brown • 440.234.4531 x108 lbrown@wtwhmedia.com Integrated Media Specialist

www.schurterinc.com/new_fuses

The ASO solar fuse protects PV Systems up to 1000 VDC according to the latest gPV requirements – – – – – –

meets both UL 2579 and IEC 60269-6 Standard midget 10.3 x 3.8mm Quick-acting according to UL 248-14 Current rating ranges from 1-30A @ 1000 VDC Breaking capacity 20kA Touch safe fuseholder mounts on DIN rail or accepts 8-14 AWG standard wire; 1-, 2-, or 3-poles available

Becky Sagadevan • bsagadevan@wtwhmedia.com

Mike Emich • 508.446.1823 memich@wtwhmedia.com Managing Director Scott McCafferty • 310.279.3844 smccafferty@wtwhmedia.com

Jessica East • 440.234.4531 x112 jeast@wtwhmedia.com

SOLAR power WORLD does not pass judgment on subjects of controversy nor enter into disputes with or between any individuals or organizations.

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Letters to the editor and by-lined articles express the views of the author and not necessarily of the publisher or publication. Every effort is made to provide accurate information. However, the publisher assumes no responsibility for accuracy of submitted advertising and editorial information. Non-commissioned articles and news releases cannot be acknowledged. Unsolicited materials cannot be returned nor will this organization assume responsibility for their care.

SOLAR POWER WORLD does not endorse any products, programs, or services of advertisers or editorial contributors. Copyright© 2011 by WTWH Media, LLC. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher.

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w w w. s o l a r p o w e r w o r l d o n l i n e . c o m

contents

24 D e pa r t m e n t s 03 The First Word 06 Policy

October

26 All in One

Solar World manufactures solar panels in four simple steps.

14 Breakthroughs

32 Installation Made Easy

Solar panel installation at a Bosch automotive facility includes innovative slide-in mounting technology.

20 Project Review

22 Solar Spotlight

Racking and Mounting

56 Products 64

Contractors Corner

Ad Index

n o

1

Historical data analysis and system simulation can help manage the risk associated with meeting solar farm production goals.

A variety of financing options give the solar industry a chance to shine.

The Coast Guard

is installing solar panels on its base

46 Step By Step

in Puerto Rico.

Here are best practices that will allow installers’ solar projects go smoothly.

52 The State Of The Photovoltaic Union The search for the best PV solar panel and system heads toward the theoretical limits of efficiences and grid-parity in cost per watt.

Table of Contents 10-11 Solar Vs2.indd 5

1

38 Managing Risk with Model- Based Simulation

43 Show Me The Money

63

v o l

F e at u r e s

24

•

38

08 Developments

18 Inverter Insider

20 11

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SOLAR power WORLD

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10/6/11 10:21 AM

[POLICY]

SEIA: The U.S. Solar Industry will continue to grow Frank Andorka exchanged emails with Monique Hanis, spokesperson for the Solar Energy Industries Association, to discuss the state of governmental policy surrounding solar energy.

Q:

Last year, the solar energy market in the U.S. grew 67% to $6.5 billion. What do you see in 2011 and beyond?

A:

Monique Hanis

Spokesperson, Solar Energy Industries Association

6

A:

We see continued growth in 2011, perhaps at a more moderate pace. But U.S. solar energy will still lead most other business and energy sectors.

We expect that the industry could be installing 10 gigawatts of solar energy capacity annually by 2015 — enough to power 2 million households. Today, there are 5,500 solar energy companies employing 100,000 workers in the United States across the supply-chain in every region of the country.

There is a good chance for supportive solar policies because they have demonstrated results creating tens of thousands of jobs and bolstering U.S competitiveness. The sector has been growing (67 percent last year) during a recession, creating tens of thousands of real solar jobs and increasing manufacturing. Not too many other industries can show such great results with minimal policy investment in such a short time. (The federal 30 percent Solar ITC became effective in 2006.)

Q: What is the current state of federal solar policy?

A: The most important policy — the 30-percent

Do you think the patchwork set of standards hurts the growth of the U.S. market?

federal solar investment tax credit (solar ITC) — is in place for homeowners, business owners and utilities that install solar through December 2016.

The alternative 1603 Treasury Program that allows commercial projects to apply for a grant in lieu of the tax credit expires this year on Dec. 31. We hope to get this renewed for one more year given the weak U.S. economic recovery and difficulties obtaining financing of commercial and utility-scale projects. Also, we saw good results from the 48C manufacturing tax credit and hope to get more funding to encourage further growth of domestic manufacturing and suppliers. Also, we are pushing for improvements and funding of the successful loan guarantee program. There is some interest to create a financing authority (Clean Energy Development Authority or Clean Energy Bank) to help support financing of larger, long-term projects. SEIA is pushing for these top priorities.

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Q:

In the current Congress, what do you see as the likelihood that federal subsidies for solar projects will continue?

10 • 2011

Q: A:

Over the last 10 years, this patchwork of differing standards and policies have shown policymakers what works and how to stimulate solar markets. Overall, we have learned we could cut costs for consumer and commercial clients and install more solar if there was more consistency nationwide. It reflects the nature of the very complicated U.S. utility market.

Q:

Everyone says other countries are beating the United States to the punch in solar energy, but I understand you have a report that may put that canard to rest. Can you give us some details of the report?

A:

SEIA and GTM Research released the “U.S. Solar Energy Trade Assessment 2011” on Monday showing that the United States exported $5.63 billion worth of solar goods in 2010 while importing only $3.75 billion for net exports surplus of $1.88 billion. The report also shows that the United States was a net exporter to China by at least $240 million. Overall, the report finds that 75 percent of the value of solar energy systems installed in the United States last year stayed in the United States, contrary to common perceptions. SPW

www.solarpowerworldonline.com

10/4/11 4:12 PM

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[DE VELOP MENT S

RESI D ENT I A L ] K at h ie Z ip p / As s i s tan t E di to r

A grid-tied PV inverter without a transformer Grid-tied PV inverters are great, but one recent residential model has an extra advantage.

The ISGA Series from Carlo Gavazzi doesn’t have a transformer or a cooling fan. The company explains that cooling fans have moving components, which ultimately will fail. Excluding fans makes the inverters more durable than those with them. The result is an increased product life and no maintenance, which also enables the manufacturer to offer a 10-year warranty.

Because solar systems are often located in harsh environments, their inverters must be able to withstand extreme weather and temperatures. A durable powder-coated metal housing allows the ISGA to operate from -4° to 122°F (-25° to 50°C) and makes it highly water

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Developments 10-11 Vs3.indd 8

10 • 2011

resistant. The inverter’s ability to operate in harsh outdoor environments earns it a NEMA 3R rating.

The inverter comes in

two strings/two MPP trackers), the inverter’s input is protected from overvoltage, ground faults, reverse polarity and surges.

Furthermore, a LCD display

a variety of sizes, 2.2, 3.3, 4.2 and 5.3 kilowatts, with a 240VAC 60Hz output. It also has a high-output efficiency of up to 96.4%, with CEC ratings reaching 95.5%. Able to accept 150 to 450VDC inputs (up to

makes the device user-friendly and a quick-mount bracket allows easy installation. An RS232 output is standard, with RS485, Ethernet, USB and Web Server available as optional communications outputs. SPW

www.solarpowerworldonline.com

10/4/11 4:15 PM

[D EVEL O PM ENT S

CO M M E R C IA L ]

A more efficient microinverter The more efficient the microinverter the better, right? One of the most efficient on the market incorporates innovations in power electronics and custom microchips to achieve a 96% weighted CEC efficiency.

The M215 from Enphase Energy also includes a 25-year warranty, which is great news for highperformance installations such as commercial solar systems.

One of the biggest issues with inverters is operation and maintenance, but the M215 makes monitoring and analyzing simple with software that displays production information in detail, including graphs, time-lapse videos and energy output by hour, day, week, month and lifetime.

The manufacturer’s Enlighten software alerts system owners

and installers to any deviation in performance, allowing quick maintenance and increased uptime.

The invert outputs 215 Watts of power with a 22 to 36-Volt MPPT range. In addition to its lowvoltage operation capability, the M215 is light weight and installs simply with a single-bolt mounting bracket.

SolarUniverse Inc. recently installed a 180-killowatt system in Livermore, California and used the M215 inverters. “We’re a strong believer in the microinverters for their reliability, high performance and easy installation,”

says Michael Flood, director of operations at the company. “We like the system because it›s lightweight, quick to put in and reduces cable waste with its flexible cut-to-length design.” SPW

www.windpowerengineering.com www.solarpowerworldonline.com

Developments 10-11 Vs3.indd 9

OCTOBER 2009 10 • 2011 Windpower SOLAR power Engineering WORLD

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[DE VELOP MENT S

UT I LI T Y]

Grid-tied PV inverter with galvanic isolation The higher an inverter’s efficiency, the more energy is generated per year, which means a better return on investment for a solar farm. With 97.5% CEC efficiency and 225 to 500-kilowatt options, Solectria Renewables’ SMARTGRID series of inverters (SGI) are ideal for utility-scale solar farms.

Currently, there are concerns about having transformerless electrical systems feed into the

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10 • 2011

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10/4/11 4:16 PM

1

9/26/11

10:44 AM

BO 50 OT 12 H

20110922_Solar_World_Full_1.pdf

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Up to 10% More Energy* in Every Serving of CIS!

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[DE VELOP MENT S

public utility grid because of the lack of galvanic isolation between the DC and AC circuits could allow the passage of dangerous DC faults to be transmitted to the AC side. However, the SGI series includes a transformer that provides galvanic isolation. In other words, the transformer electrically isolates the input power circuit between the PV array and the grid to prevent dangerous faults.

The manufacturer also says the inverters have one of the lowest nighttime tare losses in the industry. This means using a SGI-series inverter will have the least amount of energy loss at night from a charged control. In addition, the

12

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UT I LI T Y]

inverter also offers utility options such as VAR support, low-voltage ride through, controlled ramp rate and remote power control. The series includes five power levels: 225 kW, 250 kW, 266 kW, 300 kW and 500 kW, all rugged and durable enough to withstand the outdoor rough weather environments where solar farms are located. SPW

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10/5/11 4:00 PM

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[BREAKTHRO U G H S ] Fr a n k A n d or ka /E d it or ia l D ire c t or

PV Panels Without

the Silicon

Natcore Technologies offers potential alternative to traditional PV panels.

Ordinarily, solar cells don’t harvest energy well from across the entire spectrum, and they are limited in their efficiency. Natcore’s system allows cells to absorb light at 1.7 EV as opposed to 1.1 for typical solar cells.

C

ould there be a world where photovoltaic cells are no longer made with silicon? The answer to that question is a definite maybe — but one company is out there trying to do it.

Natcore Technology, a Red Bank, N.J.-based technology company, recently announced their breakthrough technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way thin-film PV cells are created. The company achieved the discovery under a joint-research agreement with Rice University.

A research team working under company cofounder

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10 • 2011

Dr. Andrew Barron fabricated two families of multilayer quantum dot films, one with silicon and the other with germanium, both of which have demonstrated the ability to produce a photo-generated current.

The discovery could eliminate the need for a silicon wafer subcell, which will accelerate the drive toward a low-cost tandem cell.

To understand the importance of this discovery, Natcore cofounder Dr. Dennis Flood says you have to understand the basics of tandem cells and how they work. Ordinarily, solar cells don’t harvest energy equally well from across the

www.solarpowerworldonline.com

10/4/11 4:18 PM

Your solar partner worldwide One Source for All Your Needs Developing efficient solutions for the photovoltaic industry requires a 360-degree approach. Henkel’s high-quality tailor-made adhesives, sealants and cleaners improve quality, enable highly automated production processes, increase production speed, and thus decrease your manufacturing cost. The innovative Henkel solutions have an excellent reputation worldwide.

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Except as otherwise noted, all marks used are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Henkel and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and elsewhere. ® = registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. © Henkel Corporation, 2011. All rights reserved. 7941 (09/11)

Henkel 10-11 Solar.indd 15

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[ B R E A KT H RO U G H S ]

entire spectrum, and they are limited in efficiency. Putting two solar cells tuned to different parts of the solar spectrum in optical series (i.e., in tandem) with one another allows more of the energy to be collected. “There are a couple of companies making those kinds of cells, but they can cost up to $300 per watt and are used in spacecraft,” Flood says.

“It’s really not available for terrestrial use.” In the last few years, those same companies have made a concentrator version of their space cells for terrestrial use. Focusing high intensity light on the cell lets them make the cells smaller and therefore cheaper.

Dennis Flood

Flood says it would be nice if companies could achieve the same goals without the focus by using quantum dots. That this is possible was proven

by Dr. Martin Green at the University of New South Wales, when he came up with the third generation solar cells. He used nanostructures to generate layers of quantum dots of silicon embedded a silicon layer. While that process is good for chip production, it’s not practical for solar cell production.

“Sometimes that can take hours, and you have little or no independent control over what you get,” Flood says. “But it showed that using quantum dots could be done.”

What Natcore can do with its technology is that they can fabricate

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Breakthroughs 10-11 Vs3.indd 16

10 • 2011

the dots and grow the silicon dioxide separately.

“Then we pour the dots over the silicon dioxide and shake them a little bit to make sure they’re properly aligned,” Flood says. “It gives us totally independent control over every step of the process.”

Flood also says Natcore’s system allows cells to absorb light at 1.7 EV, compared with 1.1 EV for the typical solar cell.

Here’s how the new system works.

Each film is comprised of silicon or germanium quantum dots embedded in a silica matrix, which is produced using a Natcore-patented Liquid Phase Deposition (LPD) silica growth technology. Unlike preceding attempts to make such layers using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technology, Natcore’s approach decouples quantum dot formation from the silica layer growth and allows for completely independent selection of quantum dot type, size and spacing within the silica layer.

The photo-generated current measurements are the first of its kind for this sort of structure and showed that the Si and Ge quantum dots were photoactive in different spectral regions. The larger Ge quantum dots were responsive to an infrared-rich light source, and the Si quantum dots were responsive to a UV-rich light source, which was consistent with the company’s expectations.

The smaller Si quantum dots (the dots diameters were 1 nm to 2 nm) responded more readily to shorter

Discuss This and other solar issues at www.engineeringexchange.com

wavelengths of light, while the larger Ge dots (5 nm and 6 nm) responded more readily to longer light wavelengths.

“We’ve created the first all quantum-dot tandem solar absorber,” Flood says. “It’s the critical first step in creating a siliconfree cell.”

Flood says the most exciting part of the discovery is that the industry could eventually get beyond the silicon subcell.

“We can get rid of the silicon wafer entirely,” Flood says. “We will have a thinfilm, dual-junction solar cell that will be very close to 30% efficiency. We can even see a future where we might be able to get to an efficiency of 35%.”

He believes it’s feasible and inexpensive to produce and can be done on different types of substrates. The manufacturing process is roll-to-roll, which means that underutilized manufacturing equipment of the sort available at Kodak’s Eastman Business Park in Rochester, N.Y. -i.e., existing technology, the same technology that produces film — can be used to produce the solar cells.

“The dryers are already there, all the permits are there, all the regulatory emissions control procedures are there — it doesn’t require any new work,” Flood says. “This approach should be able to get solar cells out the door at 10% of the capex cost of a silicon solar cell fab.”

In his 30 years in the solar industry, Flood says he’s never been a part of anything more exciting than this.

“I’ve watched a bunch of developments over my career, and I’ve never been more excited than I am about this one,” Flood says. “We’re hoping to revolutionize the industry with our discovery.” SPW

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10/6/11 8:59 AM

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[I N VE RTE R

INS I D ER]

Solivia 5.0 Solivia 5.0 NA G4 TR from Delta Energy Systems

E

ach month, Solar Power World will take you inside an inverter and highlight its parts. This month, our featured inverter is the SOLIVIA 5.0 NA G4 TR from Delta Energy Systems.

Delta Energy Systems GmbH develops, manufactures and markets worldwide, innovative customized and standard power supplies for renewable energies.

Delta Energy Systems GmbH develops, manufactures and markets innovative cuustomized and standard power supplies for renewable energies.

The Delta Energy Systems is a subsidiary of Delta Electronics (Thailand) PCL both belong to the Delta Group. Delta Electronics Group is the world’s largest provider of switching power supplies and DC brushless fans, as well as a major source for power management solutions, components, visual displays, industrial automation, networking products and renewable energy solutions.

Delta Group has sales offices worldwide and manufacturing plants in Taiwan, China, Thailand, Mexico, India and Europe. SPW

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www.solarpowerworldonline.com

10/4/11 4:22 PM

Less Guts, More Glory the new KACO blueplanet 00xi transformerless inverter series

KACO has worked closely with installers all over the US to provide them with the most reliable and efficient products and technology. Now KACO plans to usher in a new era of solar. KACO has launched a transformerless inverter series like you’ve never seen.

These inverters produce more kWhs than ever before. They enhance efficiency numbers by using a single stage DC conversion process. The low component count makes this inverter series the most reliable and lightest in the world.

Best Performance KACO transformerless inverters have a maximum efficiency of 97.2% and are already 90% efficient at 35 watts of input power

Easiest Installation

Newest generation IGBTs provide accurate and reliable operation

Minimize mounting time to approximately 15 minutes with the easyinstall T-bracket

Highest quality chokes and microcontrollers ensure maximum performance and longevity

Up to 50% lighter than comparably sized inverters

Highest Reliability

DC Disconnect housing includes a code compliant string combiner with four fused DC inputs

Sealed outdoor enclosure protects power electronics from insects, dust, humidity and ocean air Redundant high quality power capacitors increase lifetime 3.3 GW of KACO PV inverters are in operation around the world These are the most reliable inverters you can find

We turn passion into power www.kaco-newenergy.com • t: (866) 522 6765

KACO (back cover solar).indd 19

10/2/11 3:10 PM

[PROJ ECT

REVI EW ] Fr a n k A n d or ka /E d it or ia l D ire c t or

Coast Guard Goes Solar in Puerto Rico

Service forms partnership with Schneider Electric to install solar panels to meet its federal clean-energy mandate.

T

he United States Coast Guard (USCG) is committed to energy efficiency and sustainability.

That’s the first thing that Danny Gore, energy program manager for the Coast Guard, wants you to know. He says it’s in the charter of the organization, and he, along with all of the other Coast Guard personnel with energy in their titles, are ready to follow through toward this goal.

“Environmental stewardship is key to everything we do,” Gore says. “It comes from the top — when [former] Admiral Thad Allen wrote up the management strategy, stewardship played an important role in its development.

That’s what we try to live by in Puerto Rico.”

The Challenge Although the impetus for increasing the amount of solar energy used at the Coast Guard facilities came internally, there are also outside pressures on the service to go green, Gore says. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that 5% of the electricity used on bases had to be tied to renewable power, growing to 7.5% in 2013. The USCG is ahead of schedule and generates 9% of its energy from renewables — 5% direct distribution and 4% from renewable energy credits (REC).

When it came to the buildings at its Puerto Rican Air Station Borinquen, however, it was behind the curve. The USCG needed to change its aging facilities to energy-efficient buildings at the air station through both active energy

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The first thing Danny Gore, energy program manager for the Coast Guard, wants everyone to know how committed his branch of the service is to energy efficiency and sustainability, which is why their solar project is critical to its future.

production and energy conservation measures.

There are 411 residences on the base and 737 residents. Gore says some of the residences were considered uninhabitable because they were outdated.

In fact, the majority of the homes didn’t have central air conditioning, a virtual requirement in the tropical environment of Puerto Rico.

“We had to retrofit a lot of dilapidated buildings that were not in good shape before,” Gore says. “On top of that we wanted to modernize the electric system and get central air conditioning for all the units. That would be a huge improvement in the quality of life for our

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The Coast Guard will install solar panels on 411 residences at their base in Puerto Rico. These panels will help them update the houses to make them more livable and reduce utility-purchased electricity by an estimated 40%.

servicemen and their families.”

Gore says the leaders at the base looked at other operations within the USCG and decided that based on other experiences, solar power was the way to go to achieve all of its goals. The biggest challenge once that decision was made was to figure out who could handle such a large project at a reasonable cost.

“We went through a rigorous selection process,” Gore says. “One of the other challenges we faced was the tight schedule that we had to put it all together.”

The Solution In the end, the contract for the work was awarded to Schneider Electric for $50 million. Kevin Vaughn, program manager, Federal Energy Solutions, for Schneider Electric’s Buildings Business, says the most challenging aspect of the project from his company’s perspective was the timeline.

“After we went through the selection process, we started collaborating with the people at the USCG, but we had to work fast,” Vaughn says. “To maximize a grant from the Treasury Department that would have funded the project, we had to meet two incredibly tight deadlines. From the time our bid was selected to time we had to get the work under way was nine months.”

The secondary challenge was how to finance the project, Gore says.

There are three ways of financing projects for the USCG. One is the Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC). Under these types

of agreements, the USCG takes out a mortgage on the equipment and pays it off over time.

The second type of agreement is a Utility Energy Savings Contract (UESC), which mirrors the ESPC except that the agreement is with a utility as opposed to purchasing the equipment from a third party.

Lastly, the third type of financing is a Power Purchase Agreement, in which a third party comes on to the base, erects that array and then sells the energy back to the USCG. To make the financing for the Puerto Rican project work, Schneider and the USCG came up with a combination of two funding mechanisms — the ESPC and the PPA. Once the funding was in place, the project was able to get under way.

The Outcome By the time the Puerto Rico installation is done in April 2012, it will be nearly 3 mW in size, making it the largest solar installation in the Coast Guard’s portfolio of renewable energy projects. Gore says it will allow the base to exceed its statutory obligations, pay less for electricity and maintain its reputation for being forward-thinking in its approach to energy production.

Schneider Electric is constructing 300 solar photovoltaic systems

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Project Review 10-11 Vs3.indd 21

on the facilities, which will result in guaranteed production of more than 4 million kilowatt-hours per year. The photovoltaic electricity, combined with the new cool roofs that will reduce the annual cooling load of the buildings by 3.9 billion BTUs, will result in an overall reduction in utility-purchased electricity by an estimated 40%.

Vaughn says the importance of the energy security that the new system offers can’t be underestimated. When Hurricane Irene sloshed its way through Puerto Rico in August, most of the island’s electricity was out, but the Coast Guard station was able to continue its operations with little to no interruption.

“This new system will help the energy stability of the base,” Vaughn says.

“Schneider is more than 50 percent done with the PV systems and the new roofs, and then we’ll move on to improving the energy efficiency of the entire system.”

Gore says the partnerships between the USCG and Schneider Electric has done exactly what the Coast Guard has been doing for 221 years — leading, not following.

“We want to set the standard for environmental sustainability for all the other federal agencies to follow,” Gore says. “This mutually beneficial agreement with Schneider will help us continue our leadership in this area.” SPW

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[ S O L A R S P O T L I G H T: P V ]

Playing the price game P aul J. H e ne y/ E d i to r i a l D i re cto r / D e s ig n Wor l d

It’s no secret that PV module prices have been on

Paula Mints

D i r e c t o r, E n e r g y Navigant

a steady downward track. But the reasons behind the drop — as well as what it means for the solar industry — are not as widely understood.

Shayle Kann, managing director, Solar, for GTM Research/Greentech Media, explains the price reductions the market has seen this year have been driven by two markets slowing down — Italy and Germany.

“The first half of the year in both of those markets was much lower than expected in terms of demand, and those two markets together comprised almost two-thirds of the global market last year,” Kann says.

“You take the two biggest markets and you [have them fall] way short of expectations at the same time that you have enormous new manufacturing capacity buildup, and you end up with substantial oversupply which led to prices plummeting.”

On the other hand, Paula Mints, director, energy, Navigant and Principal Analyst, Solar Services Program, feels that the main reason for the rapidly falling prices of PV modules is more of the aggressive pricing for share that began back in 2009.

“The PV market began accelerating in the mid2000s because of the feed-in tariff (FiT) incentive and the grid connected application is 100% incentivedriven,” Mints says. “Some FiTs were overly generous and were constructed without a true understanding of industry behavior. The FiTs overheated the markets and, along with the artificially low prices, governments stepped in to change the incentive and lower the levels. Now we have high capacity, high inventory and prices will be held down indefinitely.”

What’s next?

Mints feels that over the next six to 18 months, prices will stay depressed.

“With current high inventory levels and softer demand, [prices] will be held down at current levels,

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10 • 2011

and there will be reselling at lower levels on the demand side,” she says.

Kann says that demand is picking up again, particularly in Germany — and his firm is expecting to see a very strong fourth quarter there.

“There’s been such a big inventory buildup, that prices have continued to come down, at least thus far this year,” Kann says. “We’re expecting to see some stabilization in the fourth quarter because Germany will be strong again. But then you look at January 2012 and we’re expecting to see prices drop again because Germany has another cut in its FiT expected.”

A bright side—maybe Some may make the argument that falling module prices only pushes the PVs that much closer to being cost competitive to other energy sources, even without the help of government subsidies.

But Mints is quick to downplay that idea.

“What good is cost competitiveness if the price leads to too low margins and potentially, more [plant] closures?” she asks.

And Kann agrees that from the perspective of the manufacturer, what’s going on right now is abysmal.

“But from the perspective of either the project developer or the consumer, it is great, because prices have come down substantially,” Kann says.

“It makes financing these projects easier, it makes projects more feasible where they otherwise would have been tight, it means that the sort of business models that are built upon relatively tight financing, like residential solar leasing, that much easier to do. That drives further demand, so I think in terms of opening up the market, it’s great. It just makes it very difficult for anybody to manufacture and sell competitively.” SPW

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[RACKING

an d

m o u n t ing ]

Stengthening the Soil Schletter provided a stronger racking and mounting system when weak soils endangered a California project.

Wolfgang Fritz, vice president of engineering for Schletter Inc., says the company discovered a problem on a 15 mW project in Five Points, Calif., when it sent an engineering team to examine the subsurface on which the project was scheduled to be built.

“The problem was that once we went 4 to 8 ft down where we were going to have to put the posts for our racking system, we discovered the soil wasn’t strong enough to hold our systems in the wind prone outside areas,” Fritz says. “We had to find a solution to the problem quickly.”

There were two possible solutions: Put in more posts to hold the load, or put concrete foundations around the posts to provide more support. After consulting with Pacific Gas &

Electric and Solon, they decided to go with the concrete foundations.

“Our engineering team got right on the project and designed a custom-made racking system that took into account the concrete,” Fritz says. “We also had to add a cathodic protection system on the rack to make sure the driven posts didn’t corrode prematurely. It was a particular challenge, but our team rose to it.”

It took a significant increase in the number of workers (nearly 200 working three shifts) and a few months for Schletter to complete the project, but in the end everything worked out well.

“The outcome was that they installed the system as it should be,” Fritz says. “Solon was happy, their client was happy and it all turned out great in the end.” SPW

Type: Ground-Mount PV Size: 15 mW

Schletter Inc. :

Project Location: Five Points, Calif.

Partners: Solon (project manager); Pacific Gas & Electric (client)

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All in

One

SolarWorld manufactures solar panels in four simple steps.

Fran k An do rk a / E di t o ri a l Di re ct o r

The SolarWorld manufacturing plant in Hillsboro, Ore.,

fronts the city’s Deer Park Industrial Park on a 97-acre property. Inside, 1000 employees work four shifts 24/7 producing crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) panels.

As you approach, the plant’s white façade sits back from the road about 400 feet, and you notice the company promotes solar power even in its parking lot, where the visitor’s carport is topped by solar panels.

Entering the building, there’s a map of the world in the lobby that chronicles the company’s global reach with tiny dots over cities where SolarWorld has offices: Hillsboro, Ore.; Freiberg, Germany; Singapore; and Cape Town, South Africa.

Then Ben Santarris, head of corporate communications and sustainability for the Americas, walks into the lobby, shakes your hand and asks if you are ready for the tour.

“We do all four steps in this plant,” Santarris says. “We’re the only large company in the country that does that. We’re a pure-play solar company, and we will continue to be such. We are all solar, all the time.”

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SolarWorld History: 1975 — Bill Yerkes creates a company called Solar Technology International (STI).

1977 — STI is purchased by Atlantic Richfield Co., becoming ARCO Solar.

1980 — ARCO Solar becomes first company to produce more than 1 mW of PV panels in one year.

1982 — ARCO Solar commissions the world’s first grid-connected PV installation in Hipseria, Calif., using panels on 108 dual-axis trackers.

1990 — Siemens acquires ARCO Solar, forming Siemens Solar.

1997 — Siemens Solar becomes the first company to offer a 25-year warranty.

1998 — SolarWorld forms as a start-up business, entering Germany’s solar market.

2002 — Royal Dutch Shell acquires Siemens Solar, creating Shell Solar.

2006 — SolarWorld acquires Shell Solar.

2008 — SolarWorld opens 480,000-square-foot plant in Hillsboro, investing $500 million to establish 500 mW of annual capacity and 1,000 employees there.

SOLAR power Engineering

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MANUFACTURING PROCESSES

The Meltdown Santarris’ first stop is a hallway. He pauses for a moment before speaking. Then he helps you understand why the hallway is important.

“This hallway separates our first and second steps of the process,” Santarris says. “We designed the factory this way so that the people working on the first step and the people working on the second step have to interact regularly.

“No one here works in isolation,” he continues, walking down the hallway toward a room that looks more hospital operating room than factory floor. “Everyone is dependent on everyone else, so we designed our factory to encourage collaboration.”

Santarris pushes open the swinging door to a room filled with workers clad in facemasks and hospital scrubs. They are hovering over giant pots and are putting what appear to be rocks in them. Santarris nods when you ask what they are doing.

“Those are pieces of polysilicon that they are putting in the crucibles,” Santarris says, putting a name to the pots. “Everything starts

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The polysilicon chunks are placed in ceramic crucibles in preparation for being melted into a thick, shimmering liquid that will eventually form the basis for new crystals.

with those chunks. We also put in pieces of silicon that are recycled from later in the process — but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”

Each crucible holds 250 lb of polysilicon chunks stacked on top of each other — and one additional silicon disk infused with a boron dopant. The boron is a crucial element because the next step — known as the meltdown — infuses the resulting crystal with a positive

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Once robust robots assemble the PV panels, humans are brought back into the process to do the final inspection and cleaning.

electrical orientation. That will be crucial to the finished product.

Once the crucibles are filled to capacity, they are moved on to high-intensity furnaces in the next room that heat the crucibles to 2500° F. Santarris invites you to look inside the furnace to see what happens to silicon at that temperature. What was once silicon rocks is now a thick, shimmering liquid. The process is called Cz, which is short for the Czochralski process. Jan Czochralski was a Polish scientist who, during his research on the crystallization rate of metals in 1916, discovered it.

Computers monitor the melting, and when the silicon is completely liquefied, a pulley lowers a cable with a seed crystal on the end of it into the center of the hot liquid. The seed crystal contains the proper molecular structure necessary to create a silicon crystal that can be used to make the wafers central to photovoltaic panel production. As the silicon grows around the seed, it will mirror the molecular structure and create a perfect silicon crystal.

“The crucible turns one way, and the cable turns the other way — that’s when the silicon crystal forms,” Santarris says. “Once the silicon starts to freeze onto the seed crystal and reaches a diameter of 8 in., the cable starts to lift faster, as does the crucible.”

The crystals, cylindrical in shape with two sharp, pointed ends, reach four to five feet in

length. They are cooled in the furnaces to a temperature of 300° F and then the process begins to remove from the furnaces.

Waferization Santarris moves on to the next room to show off the second step, which starts with a gray machine with a donut-like steel blade cutting the finished crystals into 2-ft long ingots.

“We have to cut off the top and the tail to start,” Santarris says, referring to the pointed ends of the crystal formed around the seed crystal on one end and of the depleting silicon on the other. “You’re looking to get the ingots to be a uniform width so they can be made into wafers.”

Once the ends are off and the ingots are created, they are stacked 16 to a tray, where a wire saw (wire coated with a silicon carbide abrasive — turning the wire into a sandpaperlike cutting device) will square off the rounded edges by running in a lattice configuration.

Santarris says the remaining rounded corners make a monocrystalline PV panel easily distinguishable from a polycrystalline panel, which is made up of completely square cells.

“When cells made from a monocrystalline crystal are put together into a panel, they will form diamond-shaped spaces at the junctions,” Santarris says. “Polycrystalline cells square up to each other. That’s how you can tell the www.solarpowerworldonline.com

Manufacturing Processes 10-11 Vs4.indd 29

difference just by looking at panels.”

From the squaring off process, the ingots are moved on to another wire saw, one wound between two cylindrical drums. The ingots are mounted sideways on a glass and metal holder, and are pressed, garrote-style, through a series of wires. The wire, which unspooled would measure about 400 miles long, creates silicon wafers that are eventually made into PV cells.

Each millimeter of ingot creates 2.5 wafers, which means each 2-ft ingot produces 1524 wafers. The resulting wafers are loaded on to carriers, called boats, to ready them for the third step.

Creating the Cells Santarris peers through the window and points to the wafers you have just seen cut. “They’re now going in for a number of chemical and heat treatments that will turn them from plain crystals into solar cells,” Santarris says.

The wafers turn from gray to blue as they go through the treatments. In the first treatment, small layers of silicon are removed, leaving behind irregular patterns of pyramids.

This is so that the cells can absorb more sunlight, making them more powerful.

Remember that boron wafer that’s embedded into the crucible to give a positive electriconic characteristic to the cell? Now the cells go into long cylindrical oven-like chambers to be impregnated with phosphorus gas, which creates a negative potential electronic orientation. It’s the combination of the two layers — the boron-impregnated positive layer and the phosphorusimpregnated negative layer — that allow a positive/negative (P/N) junction to form. This P/N junction is critical to allowing a PV cell to 10 • 2011

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M A N U F A C T U R I N G

generate electricity.

Once the phosphorus is impregnated in the cell, a thin layer of silicon nitride is placed on top of the cells to reduce the reflection of light in the dark-colored end of the light spectrum, which is the most light-absorbent portion of the spectrum. This process is what gives the PV cell its final blue color.

Lastly, the cells are patterned with metal inks that create pinstripe fingers and busbar circuitry to prepare the cell to gather an electronic flow activated by sunlight. Now that the cells are created, Santarris says, it’s time to turn them into the final product: the panels.

M I L L I O N S

P R O C E S S E S

Panel Production In PV production, the final stage of the production process is called moduling, when strings of cells are put together and framed into the panels. This part of the process is the most automated of all the four steps.

“We use robots in this step because the PV panels weigh about 45 lb a piece, and we want to reduce the possibility of injury to our workers,” Santarris says. “So we employ robust steel robots to do the panel assembly.”

Completed cells are soldered together into strings of 10, and those strings are put together in groups of six. The rectangular matrix of 60 cells is laminated on to special

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10 • 2011

solar glass. Then the panels have a frame put around them and a junction box added to enable connections among different panels or with an inverter-bound conduit.

Once this process is completed, the company brings in the humans again, Santarris says.

“There are close inspections along every step of the way to make sure everything is in working order, but the last bit of testing is the most crucial,” Santarris says. “We produce many panels per day, and we don’t want to go through that process only to find that there’s an imperfection in any of the panels we ship. Our business depends on our technological reliability, so we bring our workers back on to the line to make sure there are no flaws.”

Once the workers inspect and clean the panels, they are shrink-wrapped and prepared for shipping.

“We’ve made great strides in the process of building and creating solar panels, and we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past three years,” Santarris says of the plant that started producing solar panels in 2008. “We are always looking to improve our processes, but we’ve done well so far. We’re looking forward to continued success long into the future.” SPW

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installation made easy Technology Developers 10-11 Vs4.indd 32

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Solar panel installation at a Bosch automotive facility includes innovative slide-in mounting technology.

Bosch Solar Energy in San Mateo, Calif., manufactures crystalline silicon and micromorph thin-film solar modules. The Bosch Proving Ground, an automotive testing facility in Flat Rock, Mich., proved to be an ideal geographic location to install 50 kW worth of the company’s ground-mount photovoltaic technologies. To speed up the installation, the company used a slide-in mounting system featuring aluminum structural framing from another member of the Bosch Group, Bosch Rexroth Corp., located in Hoffman Estates, Ill. The Proving Ground, a controlled environment used for evaluating automotive technologies installed on cars, trucks, motorcycles and other vehicles, features a 1.4- mile test track loop with a three-lane banked turn and a 25-acre vehicle dynamics pad with a hydroplaning surface. The campus offered plenty of space with few interfering tree lines. In addition, the facility receives a large amount of sunlight throughout the year and has a significant amount of open space available for a large number of solar modules.

“Generally speaking, solar panels are mounted on rooftops or on the ground,” said Helen Nigg, director of sales for Bosch Solar Energy. “However, if they are mounted on top of buildings, there are space constraints with structures on the roof, like HVAC units and skylights.

The Proving Ground had plenty of land to use, and the facility is in an ideal spot.”

Bosch Proving Ground in Flat Rock, Mich., was the perfect place to test the Bosch << The Rexrtoth slide-in module mounting system because of its ample land on which to install several solar arrays.

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I N S T A L L A T I O N The solar installation, which encompassed nearly 20,000 square feet, included one array of crystalline silicon modules and two arrays of micromorph thin-film solar modules. A subsidy from Michigan utility provider DTE Energy partially funded the project.

The first thin-film array — arranged in a 10,670 square foot area — included two rows of 189 modules each measuring about 51 inches by 43 inches. The modules consist of thin photovoltaic film placed between two pieces of glass. The second thin-film array, using about 5,800 square feet, contained 96 thin-film modules in two rows. The crystalline silicon array — about 3,000 square feet — contained two rows of modules. Each measures about 65 inches by 39 inches.

While crystalline silicon has traditionally been used in photovoltaic technology and can easily convert sunlight to energy, thin-film modules are less costly to produce and can provide excellent energy yields in low light. Both solar technologies were used in the installation to facilitate real-time data collection on the performance and efficiency of each type of solar technology in various sunlight and cloud-cover conditions. Based on this data, Bosch Solar Energy can best determine which technology would best suit a client’s particular location or application.

The question for the engineers was how to make this installation

The aluminum structural framing portfolio contains over 120 different lightweight and load-bearing profiles that can easily be configured for diverse applications.

as cost-efficient as possible. That’s where its sister company, Bosch Rexroth, offered a solution.

To help reduce installation time on the project, Bosch Solar Energy opted to use a slide-in module mounting system made with Rexroth aluminum structural framing and designed specifically for installing micromorph thin-film solar modules.

The aluminum structural framing portfolio contains over 120 different lightweight and load-bearing profiles that can be easily configured for diverse applications, ranging from lean manufacturing

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workstations to architectural framing for sustainable residential housing. The aluminum profiles can be assembled into any arrangement required without using specialized tools. The framing is adaptable for each solar installation based on the physical environment and space limitations with no need for complex engineering.

“One of the benefits of using extruded aluminum profiles is that we can tailor the shape and dimensions of them to meet a customer’s requirements,” said Kurt Greissinger, product manager for Bosch Rexroth. “As soon as we understood the application needs, we designed a particular aluminum profile product to meet the specifications of the micromorph thin-film solar modules.”

The solar panel mounting system features variable track lengths, bracket spacing and insert dimensions. The aluminum profiles

range from 30 mm x 50 mm to 45 mm x 90 mm. Together with the slide-in track, the system forms a complete unit that securely encloses the modules. The module structure enables the micromorph thin-film solar modules to withstand force up to 2,400 Pascal, corresponding to 770 pounds of weight acting on the module.

“The entire system is tested, proven and reliable,” Greissinger said. “Not only is the framing easy to install, but once it’s in place a team of a two people simply slide the glass into the sleeve, like stuffing an envelope, and another team of two people tighten the brackets. The system cuts installation time in half to 15 seconds per module, meaning twice as many modules can be installed in the same amount of time using this slide-in technology vs. conventional four-point clamping.”

Traditionally, solar panels were installed by bolting clamps into the aluminum frame

and tightening them to hold the solar panel to the frame. Since installation brackets and clamps are no longer required, material costs are also reduced by about 40 percent.

Another component of thes system is a small, thin C-shaped plastic insert placed over the edge of the glass. The plastic protects the glass from coming into direct contact with the aluminum frame. It also facilitates smooth installation into the C-channel of the mounting profile and can be customized to accommodate solar modules of various thicknesses. Rubber-coated stops are bolted to the underside of the aluminum frame where the glass rests when it is installed.

Greissinger added that the aluminum structural framing is rugged and weatherresistant, which not only contributes to the durability of each installation but also helps aesthetically because it continues to look clean and neat over time without additional painting or other maintenance.

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I N S T A L L A T I O N

The installation is expected to generate 63,400 kW hours a year, or up to 15% of the testing facility’s energy needs.

The crystalline silicon modules, which come pre-assembled into aluminum frames, did not require the same custom slide-in system as the micromorph thin-film modules.

However, Bosch Solar Energy used off-theshelf Rexroth aluminum framing for that array.

The installation is expected to generate 63,400 kW hours a year, or up to 15% of the

testing facility’s energy needs.

“Since the facility has relatively low energy requirements, the ability to generate

15 percent of their energy requirements from the installation is pretty significant,” Nigg said. SPW

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Managing Historical data analysis and system simulation can help manage the risk associated with meeting solar farm production goals.

risk with model-based simulations

K at h i e Zi pp/ A s s o c iate Ed ito r

A reduction in actual solar-farm production compared to expected

production will negatively affect the profitability of a solar farm. In the planning stages, detailed simulation models can provide solar-farm developers with the means to determine the spread of expected production. From this, developers can be more confident of the range of the expected return on investment.

Once the solar farm is operational, monitoring and analysis of historical data can help quantify any discrepancies between predicted and actual power outputs, and give the engineering team the means to make well-informed recommendations on improving the efficiency of the overall systems. Using simulation models as an in-service support tool, which can be continually refined and verified through comparison with historical data, provides the means to troubleshoot operational discrepancies in more detail and manage the risk associated with maintenance and plant expansion plans.

“Without simulation, solar farm developers may not be exposed to the detail of system response until the integration and commissioning stage,” says Graham Dudgeon, energyproduction industry marketing manager at software developer MathWorks. “By then, if there are errors or the farm is not producing as expected, then you need to find out why and fix it — a potentially time-consuming and expensive task.”

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Simulation software, however, lets users design sites to get a feel for how the farm and power-conversion systems will operate and how all components work together. This lets engineers find errors and fix them before construction. Simulation is just a small part of how software, such as MathWorks MATLAB, can help manage risks associated with power generation.

“The ability to access, analyze, and report system data is key to optimizing performance and managing risk,” Dudgeon says. “Solar companies can use historical data to optimize power generation and operational efficiency.”

When you see you aren’t getting the expected efficiency, the challenge lies in finding out why.

Accessing data Today, modern data loggers make it possible to gather enormous amounts of data. But to reduce risks, it must be organized so analysts can find problems and understand system performance before they become bigger issues.

“A large solar farm can generate multiple measurements during operation and have, potentially, gigabytes worth of data,” Dudgeon says. “Measuring and storing is done in a variety of ways, such as with SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems and data historians. However, once data is available, the challenge lies in how to sort through and use it to find and diagnose problems or improve the system’s efficiency.”

Programs such as MATLAB can access a variety of data sources, Dudgeon explains, such as OPC (open process control) servers and SQL (Structured Query Language) databases, to bring in measured data from an instrument or database — no matter what form the data is in.

Analyzing data Historical data may be reviewed over a period of hours, days, or years, Dudgeon explains. When looking at large volumes of information, you want to understand the time-line you are interested in and the events on the system, such as component failures. You need a means to do this. MATLAB lets users view and understand historical data to find ways to improve solar-farm operation. The goal is to make sure the solar farm is operating at maximum potential for the maximum

Report the data Once technicians visualize the data and perform numeric computations, they can publish the results. They explore the data, record the information and share it in a Word document, PowerPoint, PDF, etc. Dudgeon says once an engineer identifies the reasons for the mismatch, he can provide recommendations to remedy the problem and report those recommendations in convenient ways.

Historical data can help future operation Data analysis and simulation software is available to develop predictive models based on historical data to see a system’s output before it’s built. For example, monitoring of a potential solar site will provide a model developer with insolation data that can be used as an input to a simulation model. Simulink, also from MathWorks, works with MATLAB to help engineers develop physical models and the associates control systems.

“One can develop a physical-system simulation of a solar farm to

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amount of time. Software can make this easier.

“Say you’re looking at insolation, energy the sun is actually providing over the solar farm,” Dudgeon says.

“The sun is bright and the solar farm is operating. You know the panels should be producing, say, 100 mW. But suppose the equipment is only producing 80 mW. When you see you aren’t getting the expected efficiency, the challenge lies in finding out why.”

The discrepancy could be due to many reasons such as component failures or control systems not doing what you’d like them to do. Analyzing the data can help determine the cause. The main problem will be the large amount of information.

Dudgeon says MATLAB can perform computationally intensive tasks faster than traditional programming languages.

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M A N A G I N G

provide an engineering platform that emulates the real system,â&#x20AC;? Dudgeon says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Such a physical system would consist of a model of the panels, converter connection to the grid and management system. This way, the model shows the physics of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on and will help perform process improvement.â&#x20AC;?

One method of improving a system is to use historical data to verify the physical model.

Dudgeon says itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to gain confidence that the model is accurate and representative of the real world. The model becomes a tool for in-service support.

Historical data helps continually refine and improve the original model to get a better simulation with more accuracy each time.

Simulation allows examining retrofits and upgrades before committing significant capital expenditures and provides confidence that component selection is right-sized and fit-forpurpose. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Simulation allows exploring different options,â&#x20AC;? Dudgeon says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can simulate the modulesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; current and voltage response, and input a measured solar intensity.

Suppose you need an inverter that will use maximum power-point tracking and power factor control to provide electricity to the grid. Simulation helps choose the right control strategy and the right size of inverter or other component for the task at hand, without having to commit an expenditure on something larger or more powerful than you need.â&#x20AC;?

Simulation studies help build confidence when actually buying and integrating equipment because youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll know what you expect it to do, Dudgeon says. Model-based design help close the gap between whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expected and reality. SPW

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A variety of financing options give the solar industry a chance to shine.

Show Me

The Money Fra n k An do rk a / Ed ito r ia l D ir e c to r

Solar projects are cropping up across the country. Whether you’re

talking about residential, commercial and utility projects, the volume of deals being closed this year is impressive, and there are few signs the markets will slow down.

To meet those growing needs, funding the projects becomes critical. There are many different types of financing options for solar projects, so the key issue is which one is right for you.

“There’s a lot of energy and effort being put into figuring out how to finance solar projects,” says Larry Mapes, owner of Valverde Energy in Taos, N.M. “But people are slowly but surely figuring it out.”

Mapes says what’s holding back the solar

energy industry is not the technology itself — it’s the financing issue.

“One of the sticking points of solar energy is not the technology,” Mapes says. “It’s the business model. People are still trying to understand it. There’s an entrenched way of doing business, but we have to get past it.”

Conventional Funding The funding mechanism for a project depends on its size, Mapes says. He says it also depends on who is purchasing the system.

“Is it a residential, commercial or utility application?” Mapes says. “You have to look at the size of the project and the kind of customer to decide what the best way to fund it.”

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Setting the PACE Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a type of financing that

F I N A N C I N G

is an alternative to a loan. This financing method may be used to encourage the installation of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies by helping customers overcome the financial barrier

Mapes says the incentives from local, state and federal governments differ depending on the kind of project. He recommends using the website Dsireusa. org to see what incentives your state has to offer.

“It’s a great resource for anyone trying to discover the best deals are out there at the moment,” Mapes says. “If you’re planning to do a solar project, you need to understand what funds are available to you.”

Homeowners typically self-finance projects to put solar panels on their homes, whether it’s purchasing the panels outright, taking out a home-equity loan or making use of one of the non-profits to fund the projects.

“Non-profits are offering extremely lowinterest rates,” Mapes says. “That’s a new way to fund that hasn’t been there before.”

Mapes also said homeowners should investigate the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing (see sidebar), which is a type of financing that is an alternative to a loan. It’s not available in all states and localities, but it’s another possible funding mechanism.

Utilities and commercial properties can finance projects themselves if their pockets are deep enough, Mapes says.

“If you’re a big utility, you may have the ability to build and own a solar field on your own,” Mapes says. “But that’s not always practical for smaller utilities.”

In those cases, the utility will set up at Power-Purchase Agreement (PPA), under which an independent power producer (IPP) will build the array and lease the power to the commercial or utility client.

“The IPP will get its money back through depreciation and incentives and from the money they get from the utility from the energy purchase,” Mapes says. “There are a lot of flavors with a PPA, so it’s just a matter of finding one that fits.”

Leasing Kevin White, market development manager for the solar and smart energy division of Sayno, says his company offers a host of 4 4 SOLAR POWER WORLD

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associated with high up-front equipment costs. Some states are also allowing water conservation and other improvements to be financed using this mechanism. This financing mechanism is similar in some regards to a loan program. While it does not reduce the price tag of solar systems, it can help make purchases more affordable by spreading the cost of the system over time.

PACE financing effectively allows property owners to borrow

money from a local government to pay for renewable energy and/ or energy-efficiency improvements. The amount borrowed is typically repaid through a special assessment on property taxes, or another locally-collected tax or bill, such as utility bills, or water or sewer bills. Only the property owners within the local jurisdiction that opt into the PACE program will be subject to this special assessment. In addition to reducing the upfront costs of renewable energy and/or energy efficiency improvements, PACE financing allows the cost of home improvements to be linked to the property. If a property owner participating in a PACE program sells the property, then the repayment obligation will legally transfer with the property. This approach has a number of appealing features, including: long-term, fixed-cost financing; loans that are tied to the tax capacity of the property rather than to the owner’s credit standing; a repayment obligation that legally transfers along with the sale of the property; and a potential ability to deduct the repayment obligation from federal taxable income as part of the local property tax deduction.

In most states, the legislature must authorize cities or counties to issue special assessments on select customers’ property taxes to finance solar energy systems. Certain local jurisdictions, like charter cities or local jurisdictions in home rule states, may not need state authorization to develop a PACE program. Cities or counties can use their bonding authority to finance programs. PACE programs typically do not affect state or local budgets or general funds, as the administrative costs are covered by bond issuance and interest paid by property owners that participate in the program.

Source: DSIRE Solar, http://www.dsireusa.org/solar/ solarpolicyguide/?id=26

financing options for installers of homeowner projects. In fact, the company just launched a leasing program aimed at residential solar installers.

“We have established relationships with banks that allow us to offer a number of different financing opportunities,” White says. “We cover www.solarpowerworldonline.com

10/5/11 11:16 AM

F I N A N C I N G the broad range of options.â&#x20AC;?

White says Sanyo is able to offer bankability to projects, which makes lenders more likely to fund them. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re focused on the installers,â&#x20AC;? White says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want to create a streamlined process where installers can get bank funding and insurance for the project â&#x20AC;&#x201D; we can give them the whole package.â&#x20AC;?

Under Sanyoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s program, an installer can package several different leases together and put them before a bank for funding. â&#x20AC;&#x153;With our focus on installers, that allows us to be creative when weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re putting together a financing package,â&#x20AC;? White says.

Joe Thomas, president and CEO of MAGE SOLAR USA, says his company has a leasing program that works for all sizes of projects: residential, commercial and utility scale projects. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The loan-and-lease program is just one of several financing options we have rolled out,â&#x20AC;? Thomas says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;None of our programs are really subject to any limitations. We serve a broad range of customers with a multitude of needs and requirements. We do not offer a one-size-fits-all solutions.â&#x20AC;?

Each project goes through a thorough check by MAGEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s financing partners on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;who, where, when and whatâ&#x20AC;? of a project, Thomas says. Smaller residential projects could be financed in a process similar to what it takes to finance a car or a house, while larger projects undergo much more scrutiny. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want to make sure that every customer has the most solid financing and backing of a major lender that they need to successfully execute a project,â&#x20AC;? Thomas says.

Thomas says MAGE created the program based on its proven track record of development in Germany and the rest of Europe. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Each of our various financing programs has gotten a huge amount of attention and interest from our customers,â&#x20AC;? Thomas says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ultimately, it is our opinion that the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;new solar frontierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201D; this incredibly exciting and rapidly expanding U.S. solar market â&#x20AC;&#x201D; really needs this very strategy at the moment.â&#x20AC;?

White says he sees significant growth in the solar leasing area. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In California, 20 to 30% of home installations are now leases,â&#x20AC;?

White says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have to do our part to educate the consumer and educate the installer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really no reason not to lease.â&#x20AC;? SPW

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step by step

Here are best practices that will allow installers’ solar projects go smoothly.

Fr a n k A n d o r k a / Ed ito r ia l D ir e c to r

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Installations of solar arrays can be tricky. Each installation provides

its own unusual challenges and requires that contractors come to the jobs prepared for anything.

With proper preparation and understanding of the project, contractors can minimize the surprises. Here are some steps industry insiders suggest can make your projects go more smoothly.

Before You Begin Darin Hadinger, chief technical officer and partner in Tipping Point Renewable Energy in Columbus, Ohio, says the critical starting point for any solar installation is to figure out who has the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) over projects. He also recommends getting engineers and architects involved as well.

“You want to get the inspectors and building departments involved as early as possible,” Hadinger says. “There’s a learning curve for a lot of these people because they haven’t had much experience with solar installations yet. It’s your job to educate them, so you want them involved earlier rather than later.”

Architects in particular can be helpful in helping a job go smoothly because they will typically understand how to deal with zoning boards, Hadinger says. Permitting processes vary from municipality to municipality, so make sure you understand the rules of whatever jurisdiction in which you’re making the installation.

“Zoning issues can really hold you up if you’re not careful,” Hadinger says.

“Architects can help you negotiate a planning commission because they have

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Installation Practices Vs2.indd 47

experience doing it. It’s good to have a seasoned veteran on your side.”

Once you’ve gotten your project through the zoning board, make sure you pull the proper permits, Hadinger says. Get the fire department out to the site and explain what you’re doing and what you’re installing.

“Having the fire department on your side is a godsend,” Hadinger says. “It’s incumbent on you to educate them.”

Brian Hopwood, president of Precis Solar, a solar installation company located in Canyon Lake, Calif., says the next step is to walk through a project with the customer before a single drawing is done. That way,

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INSTALLATION

PRACTICES

potential misunderstandings with customers are minimized.

“You need to set the expectations before you ever start a job,” Hopwood says. “Without setting the tone from the beginning, there’s just too much opportunity for problems down the road.”

Hopwood says it’s also important to have the materials equipment and people necessary to do the job on site. It requires forethought and planning, especially in terms of getting the proper staff members to the site.

Unpreparedness often stems from the fact the solar installers don’t just do solar — they’re primarily roofers, plumbers or some other trade that doesn’t do solar installations as a matter of course.

“I’ve seen far too many jobs where the contractors are running out every hour or so to pick up something at the local Home Depot,” Hopwood says. “That’s a waste of time and energy. If you’re doing the job properly, you should try to minimize that waste.”

Producing the proper plans is also critical, Hopwood says. Contractors should file plans with the building departments properly.

Hadinger advises contractors to have airtight contracts for customers to sign. That means having your legal counsel look over everything and to make sure it’s enforceable.

“Make it as detailed as you possibly can,” Hadinger says. “There should be specific provisions laying out exactly what you’re going to do.”

During The Job Hopwood says once you have all the proper people and equipment on site, then you’re ready to begin the installation. The first step is to place the racking and mounting on the roof. He believes you need to have roofing experience so that when you poke holes in the roof to place the mounts, you can properly seal and replace them.

“The installation is only as good as the

Installers should try to make sure the installation should be as clean as possible, including keeping the wires tidy.

mounts are,” Hopwood says. “They have to be absolutely precise and sealed.”

Hopwood runs a string through the mounts to make sure they line up with the roofline. Don’t be so concerned with installing them in a perfectly straight line because no roof is perfectly flat, he says.

Installers should try to make the solar panels match the pitch of the roof so it looks natural to the casual observer.

Speaking of roofs, Hadinger says it’s important to understand the roof warranties — contractors shouldn’t do anything to the roof that is going to void them.

“You don’t want to put anything on the roof that it can’t handle,” Hadinger says.

“Make sure you understand what the situation is with the roof before you start putting panels up there.”

It’s also important to have a continuous ground on all the panels because if you have a ground problem on a panel, you can do damage, Hopwood says. Try to run the electrical lines as directly as possible. The customer should also be instructed about how to keep the panels clean.

“If you don’t keep the panels clean, you will lose 2% to 3% of the functionality of the system and will throw away $50,000 to $60,000 over the life of the system,” Hopwood says. “We have an obligation from the design to the installation to maximize the performance at every opportunity.”

Hopwood also advised installers to raise the panels off the roof 6 inches to create

Contractors should have airtight contracts for customers to sign.

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P R A C T I C E S

Don’t be so concerned with installing them in a straight line because no roof is perfectly flat. It’s also important to understand roof warranties so you don’t end up voiding them.

an air gap behind them. To maximize the efficiency of the solar panels, installers must provide air circulation because the system will not perform properly otherwise.

As the project continues, make sure you have an engineering checklist, Hadinger says.

Installers can then go down the list and make sure they’ve done everything they need to do to make the installation a success.

Contractors should also document the project along the with digital photos — so it makes sense to invest in a decent digital camera, Hadinger says.

“If you keep a photographic record of what you’re doing, there will be less chance of something coming back to bite you later,” Hadinger says. “Recordkeeping during a job is absolutely critical, and it will help you in the long run.”

After The Install Clean. That’s the word Hopwood uses to describe how installers should leave a site. He says he’s trained his installers to leave the site

cleaner when they leave than it was when they arrived. That includes binding up the wires and looping them around to keep the clean look of the project.

“We’ve been called out to correct other installations, and you look under the panels and there’s a rat’s nest of wires,” Hopwood says. “You should never see the wires after an installation is done.”

That’s why Hopwood and Precis Solar embed the conduits into a home’s walls or attics whenever possible to prevent ruining a home’s aesthetic look.

He advises installers to work closely with inspectors before and after the work is done.

“If the inspector is a good one, they’re going to ask you to file plans with them before you even start on the project,” Hopwood says. “Then when they come out at the end of the project, they’re going to inspect to those plans. You’d better execute the installation to the plan you gave him or there could be problems.”

Hadinger says it’s important for installers

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Installation Practices Vs2.indd 51

to leave maintenance access because no system is good enough to be set in place and left without maintenance. “There are some installers that try to pack the density on the roof, and they forget that the panels are going to have to be serviced,” Hadinger says.

Above all, Hopwood advises the communication — with the customer, with the engineers, with the inspectors — is critical to an operation’s success.

“Unless you communicate during the entire project, you run the risk of having an unhappy customer,” Hopwood says. “You don’t want the customer to feel tricked or hoodwinked. There’s too much of that going on in the industry, and it hurts us. It has to stop.” Hadinger concurs.

“When in doubt, make sure everything is labeled and discussed with all of the parties involved,” Hadinger says. “This is not an established industry yet, and we can’t afford the black eye. Do the job right, and there will be no complaints.” SPW

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As the current tempest of activity in solar cell technology attests, the search for the best PV solar panel and system heads toward the theoretical limits of efficiencies and grid-parity in cost per watt.

The State of the

Photovoltaic Union

J o e G o r s e / El e c tr o n ic s Ed ito r

One might say we have come a long way since Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel’s discovery of the

photovoltaic (PV) effect in 1839, Charles Fritts’ 1% efficient solar cell in 1883, and the 1954 Bell Labs PV cells which began supplanting batteries in satellites starting with the Vanguard 1 in 1958. Others would say that even Solar Junction’s 43.5% efficient concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) solar cell in 2011 is not enough. As the current tempest of activity in solar cell technology might attest, the search for the best PV solar panel and system grinds on toward the theoretical limits of efficiencies and grid-parity in cost per watt.

The photovoltaic effect To understand the photovoltaic effect, it’s important to understand the photoelectric (PE) effect. The PE effect is the emission of an electron from a material as a result of absorbing a photon of sufficient energy. The energy of the emitted electron is proportional to the frequency of the photon. The PE effect ultimately led to the discovery of discrete allowable 52

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quantized energy states of photons by Albert Einstein in 1905.

The photovoltaic effect is a consequence of the photoelectric effect in optical semiconductor devices, which replace the vacuum of the PE effect with a conductor. Optical semiconductors tend to have a direct bandgap, which denotes that upon excitation from a photon, an electron may change energy state from the valence to conduction band across the forbidden bandgap without an additional change in momentum. Indirect bandgap materials cannot make the shift in electron energy state without an additional change in momentum, which is typically wasted heat.

For instance, a single junction PV solar cell may be implemented with p-type and n-type semiconductor material sandwiching an insulator.

This is called a p-i-n junction for short. Upon excitation by a photon of an energy comparable to

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The tech records a few maintenance figures in a nacelle. The size of the gearbox shows that almost any repair to it will require heavy-duty labor.

the junction bandgap, an electron moves from the valence band to the conduction band, while a hole is left behind in the valence band. Together, the electron and hole are called an electron-hole pair. For this to be the PV effect as opposed to the PE effect, the electron is not emitted from the surface of the material but conducted, in this case, by the n-type semiconductor and the cathode contact. The anode contact would be made at the p-type material for the corresponding positive hole charge.

When the PV solar cell is exposed to light, the potential difference between the two electrodes is proportional to the material’s bandgap, or the difference in energy between valence and conduction bands, which is usually expressed in electron volts (eV).

Larger bandgap materials correspond to shorter wavelength, higher frequency

photons such as ultraviolet and blue, whereas longer wavelength, lower frequency photons, such as red and infra-red, correspond to smaller bandgaps.

PV efficiency Efficiency is defined as the ratio of useable steady-state electrical power from a PV solar cell to the total input power. Because solar power is used in outer space, solar-panel efficiencies are typically specified with an air mass (AM) coefficient that describes performance under standard conditions.

AM0 is the spectrum outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. AM1.5 is the standard testing condition within industry for terrestrial applications.

The seminal calculation on the limit of PV efficiency was done by Shockley and Queisser in 1961. They based the www.solarpowerworldonline.com

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approximation on the fundamental physical limits imposed by blackbody radiation, recombination, and spectral losses with an assumed single p-n junction, bandgap of 1.1 eV, AM1.5, single sun light intensity. Their approximation also held that the energy of a photon in excess of the bandgap is entirely lost, which may not be entirely true.

Given these assumptions, a single silicon p-n junction would have a peak theoretical efficiency of 33.7%.

Many researchers have spent the last half-century studying additional factors that reduce PV performance as well as methods for mitigating the limiting assumptions outlined by Shockley and Queisser.

Foremost among the methods for improving performance is the multi-junction devices that optimally tune for separate pieces of the available spectrum. Further increases in 10 • 2011

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EN GINE E RING TE CHNOL O G Y DE V E L O P ME NT S

Unconcentrated • One Junction Cell - 30% • Two Junction Cell - 42% • Three Junction Cell - 49% • Infinite Junction Cell - 68% Concentrated • One Junction Cell - 40% • Two Junction Cell - 55% • Three Junction Cell - 63% • Infinite Junction Cell - 86%

Common and notable photovoltaic cell technology • Silicon • Crystalline • Multicrystalline (Polycrystalline, p-Si, or Ribbon) • Amorphous Thin Films • GaAs • CdS and CdTe • CuInGaSe_2 (CIGS) • Si • CZTSS efficiency may come from concentrating the input light, infrared capture, hot electron capture, and down conversion to a common wavelength.

A study in 1980 applied an updated Shockley-Queisser limit to multi-junction and concentrated PV solar cells. The study showed a 68% limit for unconcentrated and 86% limit for concentrated solar cells. The units of sun light concentration are “suns” where 1 sun is equivalent to unconcentrated conditions and 100 suns is 100 times the intensity of the sun. Typical intensities for concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) cells are from 2 to 1000 suns. CPV performs well in direct sun light, but not as well as unconcentrated PV does with diffuse light environments. Currently, CPV is a small fraction of the solar market, though as the technology is developed and costs are reduced it has the potential to gain market share (see chart above).

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10 • 2011

Crystalline silicon solar cells use a single crystal substrate, similar to semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs). This mono-crystal wafer for the substrate tends to be an expensive and heavy component to the PV device. The familiar lithography, deposition and etching processes are available to manipulate the wafer into a PV solar cell, just as they might for a MOSFET, NPN transistor, or microprocessor. In the 1960s, the crystalline silicon solar cells were 11% efficient. As of June 2011, SunPower’s production single crystal silicon solar panels have been up to 24.2% efficient. As seen in the NREL figure, the highest efficiency single crystal silicon solar cell was an Amonix CPV at 27.6% in 2005.

Multicrystalline, or polycrystalline (p-Si) or ribbon, silicon PV solar cells are cheaper and less efficient than crystalline. Instead of the tightly controlled single crystal growth process, a casting of molten silicon into the desired form may be used to produce the multicrystalline substrate, which has been a popular method for optical semiconductor devices for some time now. As the silicon cools, it changes phase from liquid to solid.

The faster the cooling, the smaller the crystals, often called “grains”, form within the mold. Due to grain boundary defects, the efficiencies leveled off at 20.4% in 2004.

An amorphous (uncrystallized) silicon (a-Si) PV cell, the most popular thin-film technology at about 15% market share, is a thin homogenous layer of silicon deposited rigid or flexible substrates, such as a glass and polymer. Because it is better at absorbing light, the amorphous silicon can be thinner than crystalline silicon PV cells. According to the NREL figure United Solar achieved 12.5% efficiency in 2009 with a triple junction amorphous/nanocrystalline silicon device (a-Si/nc-Si/nc-Si). Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) is synonymous with microcrystalline silicon (µc-Si). Other varieties of amorphous silicon include silicon carbide (a-SiC), silicon germanium (a-SiGe), and silicon nitride (a-SiN). One drawback of the amorphous approach to PV solar cells is the increased degradation of the device performance over time.

Thin films have lower theoretical max efficiency, but superior manufacturability to the tradition semiconductor material processes. As the costs of production decreases, a lower efficiency is allowable to compete with the other solar panels on the often-cited dollar per watt ratio. Current thin film solar cell technologies leading in efficiency and notability are: • 28.2% GaAs, single junction, by Alta Devices in 2011 • 20.3% CIGS, on glass, by ZSW Stuttgart in 2010 • 19.1% Si, 43µm thick, thin film transfer,

by ISFH in 2011 • 12.8% CdTe, monolithic, by PrimeStar in 2011 •10.1% CZTSS, solution grown, by IBM in 2011 Closing remarks With all the activity to support as many different facets of research, it comes as no surprise that solar PV is the fastest growing renewable energy resource and topped 40 GW worldwide with an annual production rate of 24 GW in 2010. As we climb the ladder to peak efficiency and price-to-performance ratios, it is important to remember that the modern PV solar cells of today are the culmination of over 172 years of research and development.

As the NREL figure can attest, there is no easy solution and there were no “overnight” technologies to appear out of nowhere to make PV solar a reality. Each success has a lineage surrounded by a litany of paths that did not make the cut, either for future R&D money or perceived technical feasibility. As yet, there is no one-size-fits-all technology that meets everyone’s requirements, both economically and technically. However, there are a variety of commercial products with economic viability even within the current cost of energy. Each case requires individual analysis of the economic case for solar PV energy systems. Though as the price-towatt ratio to pushes well below $1/watt for manufacturers, the question will no longer be “Is it economically feasible?” but “When can you install mine?” SPW

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[PRODUCTS ]

HM/HW labels for backside of solar panels TE Connectivity offers UL-certified HM high-tack metalized polyester and HW high-tack white polyester labels for use on the backside of solar panels with typically PVF or PVA surfaces. The labels are rated to 125°C and provide clear identification for serial numbers, approvals and other necessary information. HM labels suit applications that require a metal look such as rating plates, and the HW labels are suitable for use on barcoding, electronic PCB, components and general labeling applications.

TE Connectivity www.te.com

Distributed Energy Management System Solstice®, Satcon®’s distributed energy management system, is an optimized end-to-end, panel-to-grid, solar PV electrical power generation system that focuses on improving total system performance, reducing overall balance of system costs and increasing system controllability, safety and uptime.

Satcon www.satcon.com

Solar Mounting Structures Unirac’s universal SOLARMOUNT™ rail system has three options that can be assembled into a wide variety of

Efficient Microinverter

PV mounting structures to accommodate any job site:

The M215 is the world’s most efficient microinverter. Based on

SOLARMOUNT Flush, SOLARMOUNT High Profile Tilt,

Enphase’s third generation technology, the M215 incorporates

and SOLARMOUNT Low Profile Tilt.

the latest innovations in power electronics and custom microchips to deliver higher efficiency, more power and

Unirac www.unirac.com

improved installation

Enphase enphase.com

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[PRODUCTS ]

PV System

Low Slope Mount

AE’s PV Powered™ inverters deliver maximum

Quick Mount’s Low Slope Mount takes the traditional base-and-

energy harvest from your PV system with high

post PV mount to its ultimate level. It’s the strongest you can buy

reliability and world-class efficiency. Significant

for mechanically attaching commercial PV systems to TPO, PVC,

software integration and a modular design

EPDM, built-up asphalt, and virtually all other non-metal low

combine to create a scalable platform with fewer

slope roofs.

components and higher uptime.

Advanced Energy solarenergy.advanced-energy.com

Quick Mount PV www.quickmountpv.com

Solar Thermal System Bosch Solar’s TR0301 is a controller for basic solar thermal DHW systems. It features three sensor inputs; one output for a solar pump, holiday function and an animated display. The basic unit includes two temperature sensors.

Bosch Solar www.bosch-climate.us

Aluminum Frames ET Solar developed the Zero-Rack modules with patented Zep Groove aluminum frames — providing an

Series 3 PV Modules

auto-grounding, drop-in mounting solution. Zero-Rack modules require no rails, making it easier to ship and store the system and reducing the installation time up

First Solar unveiled the FS Series 3 PV Module — the

to 50 percent.

new extension of its industry-leading module design that represents the future platform for efficiency roadmap programs. Built on the proven construction

ET Solar www.etsolar.com

and performance of Series 2, Series 3 delivers higher efficiencies and accommodates new balance of system layouts.

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[ PR O D UCT S]

Aurora 300-Watt Microinverter Power One’s new Aurora 300 Watt micro-inverter product offers something new to Power-One customers. The ability to individually link all modules within a specific installation is an alternative to the traditional Aurora string inverters Power-One is famous for. They allow you to control the panels output individually and offer Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) for each single module.

Power One www.power-one.com

Solar Receiver The SCHOTT solar receiver PTR® 70 has a new type of anti-reflection coating which has a high abrasion resistance and at the same time allows the transmission of more than 96 percent of the sun’s radiation. The absorber coating has an absorption degree of approximately 95 percent and very low emittance of below 14% heat radiation at a temperature of about 350 to 400 degrees C.

Schott Solar www.schottsolar.com

Single-Phase Inverters A new generation of Ingeteam’s single-phase inverters, with rated capacities from 2.5 to 6 kw for grid connected systems, are designed to meet the requirements of even the most demanding international standards. These easy-to-install units are designed for outdoor use and are equipped with all the necessary protections. The SUN LITE are certified to various international standards and are therefore widely used in a number of markets. Available in versions with or without a galvanic insulation transformer.

Ingeteam www.ingeteam.com

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[PRODUCTS ]

Ground Mount Solar Racking System The Cooper B-Line Ground Mount Solar Racking System is designed to support large scale ground mount solar PV installations. The system accomodates virtually any type and size of solar PV panels with many built-in labor saving features, including welded-frame, I-beam design, preassembled components, quick installation with no adjustments or fabrications in the field, engineering support, ARRA compliant, standard hold-down clamps, quick-pier attachment and pre-panelization capability.

Cooper Industries www.cooperindustries.com

Solar Charge Controller

Solar Modules Versatile and adaptable, with power output ranging from

The simplicity and high performance

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For larger projects, the charge

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controllers can also be equipped with special functions, e.g. with night light function and selectable charging plateau and deepdischarge protection voltages.

Steca Solar www.stecasolar.com

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[ PR O D U C T S ]

Premium Batteries Trojan Battery’s Premium Line of flooded deep-cycle batteries is specifically engineered to withstand the rigorous conditions of renewable energy applications. The Premium Line incorporates advanced battery features such as Trojan’s DuraGrid™, MaxGuard® XL separator and Alpha Plus® Paste technologies that provide superior performance, rugged durability and exceptionally long life.

Trojan Battery www.trojanbatteryre.com

SMARTGRID Inverters

S-5-PV Kit

Solectria Renewables’ SMARTGRID (SGI) 225-500 series of inverters boasts an

The new S-5-PV Kit is UL listed

industry leading 97.5% CEC weighted

to 2703, a standard covering

efficiency, which translates into significantly

bonding and mounting. It is

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also ETL Listed to UL 1703. Its

utility-scale PV systems. The SGI series of

groundbreaking new mounting

transformer based inverters are rugged

disk ensures module-to-module

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saving enough to pay for the entire S-5! mounting system.

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Module Cleaning Device Module cleaning devices have long consisted of telescopic rods with cleaning brushes affixed to the top. The PvSpin is the first of its kind; a consistently effective, easy-to-handle module cleaning system powered exclusively by water pressure. Lightweight and easy to handle, the PvSpin can be guided from the ridge of the roof and safely operated by one person.

Schletter www.schletter.us www.solarpowerworldonline.com

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[PRODUCTS ]

Tranformerless Inverter KACO has launched a transformerless inverter series like you’ve never seen: High efficiency and best string inverter pricing for the most popular KACO inverter line worldwide. 96.5% CEC efficiency on all 00xi series inverters ensures lowest energy losses.

KACO www.kaco-newenergy.com

Solar Panels Hanwha Solar One introduces its SF260 solar panels, which have five key features, including a 5-year product warranty and a 25-year performance warranty. Its tight power

AC Module Solution

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Photovoltaic Strain Relief Fittings Sealcon - ULf1 (746C) Solar / Outdoor / Photovoltaic Strain Relief Fittings, Cable Glands, Cord Grips, UV Stable & Meets Water Immersion Requirements (Submersible), IP 68 & 69K, NEMA 4x & 6, V0 Flame Rating, Available Multi-Hole Inserts: Silicone, Viton® & Now New Membrane Black TPE Versions. Call today to spec in your application or request a catalog. 800-456-9012 / 303-699-1135

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[ AD

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[CONTRACTORS CORNER]

Standard Solar, Rockville, Md.

Scott Wiater joined the solar industry three

Scott Wiater

President Standard Solar

years ago when a private equity firm purchased Rockville, Md.-based Standard Solar and made him the president of the company. He says he feels fortunate to be in the industry and in particular this company that, under his leadership, recently made Inc.’s 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the country.

Standard Solar has grown 1,686% in the past three years and posted revenues of $23 million last year. It has installed 10 mW worth of projects and continues to build more projects. Wiater says the company expects to double the size of its revenues in 2011 and is bullish on the future.

What Wiater believes separates Standard Solar from other contractors is the fact that the company can handle a project from the concept to the installation.

“We can control a project from end-to-end, which means that we are in control and can eliminate some of the natural waste that is involved

Standard Solar Vital Statistics:

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in projects,” Wiater says. “We’re in this for the longterm.”

The solar industry is a high-growth industry for companies that are committed to it, Wiater says. But it is fragmented and still in its infancy, and part of what’s causing the fragmentation is the uneasiness surrounding the future of governmental subsidies.

“We’re going to have to stand on our own at some point,” Wiater says. “But until that day comes, we need to see some stability in the incentive programs.

“The companies investing in solar energy don’t like instability,” he adds. “Every time there’s a discussion of the subsidies, it sends a ripple through the industry. That makes it harder to make long-term plans.”

Wiater also sees consolidation hitting the industry soon.

“You’ll have about 12 companies at the top of the industry doing about 80 percent of the business,” Wiater says. “Then you’ll have a bunch of companies below that divvying up the rest.” SPW

3-year growth:................1,686% 2010 Revenue: ..............$23 million 2007 Revenue: ..............$1.3 million Employees:.....................76 Employee growth: ..........74 Founded: .......................2004 Energy Industry rank:.....#8 Source: ..........................Inc 5000

10 • 2011

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160 MW of Green Engineering MEASURE IT – FIX IT

Since 2001, engineers at Siliken Renewable Energy have used the National Instruments graphical system design platform to produce solar panels generating 160 MW of renewable solar energy.

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Siliken Renewable Energy, one of the world’s fastest-growing manufacturers of solar panels, trusts NI LabVIEW software for applications ranging from research and development to automated test.

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Finally, someone beat Advanced Energy’s 97.5% CEC efficient solar inverter.

It’s the new 98% efficient Solaron 500 HE. Advanced Energy’s new Solaron 500 HE inverter just achieved the industry’s highest efficiency rating on the CEC list for the third year in a row. Now we’re up to 98% weighted CEC efficiency – improving on last year’s industry record of 97.5%, and staying one to three percentage points ahead of the competition. That 98% average includes all auxiliary power so every percentage point increase in efficiency delivers an exponential return on your investment. Oh, and lastly, its peak efficiency is 98.7%, all in.

See how much you have to gain by choosing the 98% efficient Solaron 500 HE inverter from Advanced Energy. www.advanced-energy.com/98percent sales.support@aei.com | 877.312.3832

Advanced Energy, Solaron, and PV Powered are U.S. registered trademarks or service marks of Advanced Energy Industries, Inc.

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