ProSolar System Plays Key Role in 1st Solar Power Station Rated at 1,500 Volts
Marking a new technology milestone in the global effort to increase renewable energy production by driving down overall system costs, GE has deployed the first 1,500-VDC (volts, DC current) open circuit (OC) central inverter for utility scale solar power plants. The inverter will help reduce overall system costs, which is vital to making solar power a more economical alternative to fossil fuel technologies.
Central inverters are key components of photovoltaic (PV) plants. The technology converts DC power produced by solar panels to AC power, which is then fed into the main grid.
GE Energy’s Power Conversion business developed, built and delivered its 1,500-VDC ProSolar central inverter technology to solar power plant system integrator BELECTRIC, the global market leader in terms of installed power. BELECTRIC installed GE’s advanced central inverter at its new solar power plant in southern Germany, utilizing PADCON’s 1500 VDC System Technology.
The 1,500-VDC OC central inverter for BELECTRIC is designed as an outdoor version and offers a number of key benefits. Most notably, it allows operation at high DC voltages on panel level with lower DC currents while increasing the rated power for inverters. This can result in significantly lower costs for the technical DC infrastructure as well as the overall balance of system costs. Since the power of the inverter system is limited mainly by the current, the power can be substantially increased by increasing the operating voltage, and this means additional cost savings.
Due to higher operating DC voltage and higher output with the same size as conventional ProSolar 1,000-VDC OC inverter units, the 1,500-VDC OC solution offers higher power density with the same small footprint that means optimized and flexible site layout. The liquid-cooled and improved power electronic topology ensures high efficiency, especially in partial load operations and is developed in Berlin.
By offering its solar inverter technology as part of its broad portfolio of products and solutions, GE Energy is supporting ongoing energy policy changes in Germany, which plans to increase the share of renewable energies to 35 percent of total power demand by the year 2020. By deploying the ProSolar central solar inverter to help reduce the costs of solar power generation, PV projects will become an increasingly economical alternative to fossil fuel technologies.
GE Energy acquired Power Conversion (then known as Converteam) in September 2011. To learn more, please visit: www.ge-energy.com/electrifyingchange.
