Huawei launches smart photovoltaic power station solution in Germany, making inverters smarter

The website reported on December 27 that China's Huawei released a solar string inverter solution at a 7.8MW solar park in Germany, demonstrating its determination to expand the solar industry in Europe.

Huawei, a Chinese information and communications solutions provider, has been expanding its photovoltaic industry for a long time. This week, Huawei launched its smart photovoltaic power station solution in a solar park in Germany that can provide 7.8 megawatts.

The Lansweiler Reden photovoltaic plant under the German Greencells company is located in a mine in West Germany and is a practical equipment factory. The plant was connected to the power grid in May and is Huawei's first smart photovoltaic power plant in Europe. "PV Magazine" was invited to visit the plant to see the overall system operation.

This 7.8MW photovoltaic power plant has been using Huawei's SUN2000 inverters instead of traditional centralized inverters. 300 inverters are installed throughout the plant, which greatly facilitates the plant owner to control and supervise the overall operation, increasing the output by 5% and the maintenance efficiency by 50%.

Huawei's European PV inverter sales director said in an interview that although the price of this string inverter device is comparable to that of the entire traditional centralized inverter system, the string inverter is easier to control and has a higher power output.

Huawei's head said that each 1.56MW substation in the factory is equipped with 60 inverters. These string inverters with little mutual influence are connected in groups of ten, each inverter is connected to five shunts, and each shunt controls 20 components. The inverter connected to the transformer does not need to be connected to a straight cable, which further reduces costs. Once a problem occurs with the equipment, the inverter (weighing 48kg) is easy to install and replace.

Previously, Huawei said that its global inverter revenue increased by more than 3% in the second quarter of 2014. Huawei is happy to show the durability of its inverters. Huawei has conducted weather resistance tests at the factory. The protection level of this inverter reaches IP65, which enables it to perform optimally in extremely hot or continuous rainy or alkaline climate conditions.

He said the multi-function maximum power tracker can increase power output and reduce the impact of cloudy days. He added that the inverter's fault detection rate has increased by 80%, which means that the downtime is greatly reduced.

Inverter is more intelligent

Xu Yingtong, general manager of Huawei's Smart PV Plant Solutions, also talked about the use of string inverters to solve a series of problems that centralized inverters cannot solve. He said that string inverters are equipped with smart batteries, remote monitoring functions, and can connect to Huawei's 4G LTE wireless network, which makes the monitoring of PV power plants wider and the data analysis stronger, ultimately improving power generation efficiency.

Allison Finch, Huawei's director of business development for the UK and Ireland, said that combining its traditional strengths in telecommunications with the emerging field of solar energy makes Huawei more competitive.

Huawei string inverters are being installed on a large scale around the world. In the first half of this year, Huawei produced 500MW of inverters in China, most of which were string inverters. Huawei plans to produce 3GW of inverters (including centralized inverters) globally in the first quarter of next year.

The CEO of German Greencells said, "We calculated that using string inverters is cheaper than using centralized inverters. There is no need to use DC boxes and DC optical cables, which reduces hardware costs."

String inverter globalization

Huawei and other companies around the world support the use of string inverters. From now until 2018, centralized inverters will still be the mainstream. But after 2018, string inverters will be widely used around the world, and the power will reach 24GW (currently 10GW). And in the next four years, the price of string inverters will drop significantly.

It is predicted that in terms of installation, string inverters will dominate the commercial installation sector, with a usage rate of 35% in 2013 and a usage rate of 50% by 2018. String inverters will account for 20% of the public sector in 2018.