Greentech Lead America: GE’s Power Conversion business has signed an agreement with solar power plant system integrator BELECTRIC to deliver 1,500-VDC ProSolar central inverter technology.
GE has delivered the technology to BELECTRIC last year. The new agreement aims to install more than 100 of this type of new and innovative inverter by the end of the year.
The agreement represents the first step by the companies to join forces in developing innovative solar solutions for the utility solar market.
The 1,500-VDC ProSolar central inverter helps to decrease system losses and balance of system costs as well as reduce operation and maintenance costs. This inverter technology is based on the GE 1,000-VDC ProSolar inverter solution which runs smoothly in many solar plants since 2009 with more than several hundred megawatts (MW) in total.
Central inverters convert DC power produced by solar panels to AC power, which is vital to making solar power a more economical alternative to fossil fuel technologies. Therewith central inverters are key components of photovoltaic (PV) plants.
BELECTRIC has connected more than 1 GWp of utility-scale solar power plants all over the world. Since July 2012, the company has installed GE’s advanced central inverter utilizing PADCON’s 1,500-VDC system technology at three of its solar power plants in southern Germany. The plants deliver about 15 MWp of power, supplying more than 4,000 households and saving 10,000 tons of CO2 .
GE’s inverter technology has a long track record of extremely high reliability resulting from the company’s experience in the development of frequency converters for the wind energy, oil and gas as well as metals sectors and other industrial applications, GE said.