Француски Solar Explorers Acquire Дугме за инверторов Huawei
After рационализација construction of photovoltaic arrays as far abroad as New Guinea and Solomon Islands, French developers are starting to roll out a new generation of инвертер across their home market.
France is gently warming to the utility - scale projects that come to dominate global photovoltaic installation, али according to Guirec Dufour, технички директор произвођача зелене енергије Quadran, француски соларни сектор remains, заузет регулацијом. On kaže da su procesi o obtain building autorizations, restrictions on the use of farmland, and exceptionally demanding national construction codes are typical French previše stimulacije.
Over the past decade, Dufour has made a career of solving technical holdups on renewable energy construction sites. His efforts have been met with success. When he joined Quadran in 2008, he was one of just four workers. Following a brutal period of market consolidation, the firm has emerged with 250 employees, some operating 250 MW of solar plants, 500 MW of wind farms, and 20 MW of hydroelectric and biogas recovery units. Its achievements have attracted two acquisitions in the past two years, the latest from oil giant Total.
Quadran attributes its growth to the company's agility у Реацхинг Нев Маркетс и увођење нових решења.
The company has learned tricks in solving необично challenges that have given it a competitive edge in its core market. Dvije godine, Dufour put this resourcefulness to the test when he set out to design the first 11 MW solar farm in New Caledonia, a French territory located in the South Pacific, 1,200 Km east of Australia and about as far removed as географски possible from Quadran's offices in Béziers, France.
Further and Smaller
“The time difference between headquarters and New Caledonia is nine hours,” Dufour says. “If you need to call someone in Europe, it is simply impossible."Proved That проблематика. Ми радимо maintenance tasks on key components such as centralized invertor would typically require specialized technicians and heavy equipment that was unavailable on location and expensive to import.
"ПВ у Нова Каледонија басицалли did not exist two years ago when we started building the plant. You couldn't find trained personnel to maintain centralized инвертора," says Дуфоур, "And if you trained workers yourself, they were likely to go work for the competition in the following 15 days, leaving you constantly training new staff.”
Instead of meeting the human resource challenge head on, Dufour shifted construction of Quadran's New Caledonia solar park to string inverters, which were lighter and easier to install than centralized. He connected all 43,000 solar panels of the project to the grid using Huawei Fusion 300 Solar string inverters, each with a capacity of 33 кв.
"У прошлости, large projects had to adopt central inverters because decentralized inverters were not powerful enough," explains Dufour. “Now, Huawei products can reach power outputs of up to 100 kW, so we can use string inverters on large plants too.”
Smaller and Simpler
In terms of maintenance, decentralized string inverters offer an advantage over central in that they require no specialized engineers or lifting equipment to install. Three workers can transport the hardware on-site by hand, and connect it without risk. If an inverter malfunctions, instead of flying in heavy equipment or representatives from its manufacturer to repair the device, local workers can simply unplug it and install a replacement.
“We just simplified everything in our solar plants using these inverters,” says Dufour, explaining that the entire fleet of Huawei products in New Caledonia have only recorded two faults since their installation. “They are much more reliable and require absolutely no maintenance. If we have a fault, we just swap the component.” It is still early to quantify these benefits, but he expects that the string inverters in the project are drastically reducing its maintenance costs.
Since its experience у Новој Каледонији, Quadran commissioned Huawei inverters to connect close to another 100 мВ инсталације на удаљеним локацијама и у континенталној Француској. Among the Technology perks, Dufour says that Huawei is the only supplier he knows of that embeds ICT in its инвертер hardware to supervise планира операције. The product offers voltage of 800 VAC, reaches energy conversion efficiencies of 99%, and has helped meet French construction codes for stringing PV modules in parallel.
"Because you only have two strings per entry point, не морате да користите fuses on the ДЦ сиде. To je instalacija više reliable, " says Dufour, adding that higher AC voltages allow for lower losses on the connection to the transformer, avoiding the use of AC combiner boxes, and that the in-built ICT supervises the system with no need for additional monitoring equipment. “We just have an inverter cables and that is it. That means less equipment, and less equipment means fewer faults.”
Simpler and safer
Ксавиер Барбаро, председник Неоен-а, водећи независни француски програмер за обновљиве изворе енергије, слаже се да је време застоја ПВ Плант је субстантиалли Редуцед Вхен усинг стринг инвертерс. To date, his company has brought 2 GW of solar into construction across four continents. For banke Ability purposes, Neoen signs turnkey engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts with its subcontractors, but it still specifies the subcomponents that it wants installed.
The company placed its first order with Huawei in 2016 after winning a 50 MW photovoltaic project in Zambia as a pioneer of the Scaling Solar program run by the World Bank. Treading new ground, Neoen hanted to anticipate logistic challenges by supplying the landlocked country with small and easy to deploy invertor.
"Paid a visit to Huawei in Shenzhen, China, not really knowing what to expect," says Barbaro. "But we liked what we saw. У условима производње, то је била стварна светска класа. "Initially valued the small scale of the FusionSolar инвертер за пројекат у Замбији, и has since grown fond of its convenience and performance as well.
"Huawei has proven a reliable supplier with a very convincing product", - рекао је он. "So far, we have had no issues with any of the Huawei инвертора that we have installed."Since 2016, Neoen has ordered Fusion Solar inverters for some 300 MW of photovoltaic plants across Armenia, Argentina, and the largest инсталирање у надстрешницу France, which it inaugurated in April 2019.
Safer and Cheaper
Barbaro says that simplicity offers advantages beyond construction sites, as lenders for Neoen's renewable energy projects are cautious about the industrial choices that his company makes. He says that Huawei products have proven bankable, reassuring financial присталице, and bringing down the overall cost of projects. - What we value is experience and experience, - рекао је Барбаро. “If you have dozens of gigawatts of installed installed capacity, you have a lot of experience covering a lot of different situations.”
Neoen is notably building a 200 мВ соларни погон у Аргентини, located 4,000 meters above sea level. Није све инвертора раде на овом нивоу, али Хуавеи products have been deployed successfully under similar conditions у Кини. "We tend to go with suppliers that can prove their point when they argue that their product offers the right choice for a Situation that we фаце," says Барбаро. “That is something that we have with Huawei.”
In today's competitive маркет, Барбаро says that even curtailing financial provisions for inverters can have a decisive impact on the operation and maintenance budget of a photovoltaic project. "Solar is now reaching prices испод $ 20 по МВх, and that is really a game changer," he says. "Every step in the Project has been a part of that achievement, including the инвертора. The represent 6-7% од PV install's capital expen-diture and play even bigger role у својим оперативним трошковима.”
Whereas capex optimization has dominated LCOE improvements over the past five years, Барбаро argues that the next frontier is probably опекс optimization, and there is a lot to gain from inverters in this area. "That is how we decided to use Huawei inverters у Француској", каже Барбаро. “Of course, logistics in France is easier than in Armenia, but the product remains relevant.” He explains that Fusion Solar is low-risk, user-friendly, and increasingly geared towards interoperability, concluding that “Huawei wants to make sure that their product is easy to package with substations and hardware coming from other suppliers,” and he concludes: “That is something that we like.”