TECHNOLOGYINVERTERS
Intelligent Power Conversion
The market place for PV and solar devices tends to focus on the efficiency of the PV device, as in solar panels, rather than the entire value chain and infrastructure required to develop renewable solar based energy. Ask any module manufacturer and they will tell you that any solar cell is only as good as what it is connected to. Leo Casey, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Satcon discusses how the next generation of renewable energy inverters will change the future of distributed energy production and distribution.
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he next generation of commercial and utility scale solar inverters will be the core enabling technologies for the growth of large scale distributed energy systems. Through a combination of increased capacity, improved output quality, and advanced control features, these more powerful, efficient, and intelligent inverters will enable a stepped improvement in both the controllability and the overall performance of renewable energy production and distribution. These inverters will also be critical elements in improving the performance of future renewable energy systems through advanced diagnostics and prognostics that will increase availability and minimize repair and maintenance requirements and cycles.
Three unique areas of opportunity exist in alternative energy production, such as photovoltaics (PV) and fuel cells (FC), that don’t exist in traditional turbine driven generators powered by hydraulic or steam processes. First, many alternative energy sources are direct current (DC) in nature, but have poorly regulated terminal characteristics. These DC energy sources require efficient power conversion, most commonly in the form of inverters, to change the energy into a regulated alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) voltage for utilization by the consumer or by utilities. This electronic interconnection point can then be used to harness value added activity. The inverter is by its very nature the intelligent
device in the energy conversion and
control system. It has the ability to sense a wide variety of conditions; to store, process, and react to these conditions; and to report them to a remote management system. The true value of the inverter as the intelligent component of the system has yet to be fully realized and will be increasingly
www.solar-pv-management.com Issue V 2010
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