In addition to expanding its manufacturing, the company plans to add to its sales support operations and to build its research and development teams for future products.
The company has posted openings for product managers and an information technology manager and engineers.
SolarBridge, which has raised $46 million to date, is a leading maker of advanced and efficient microinverters that improve the reliability of rooftop solar power systems, increase energy production and save costs by simplifying installation.
The company, which is expanding rapidly in Austin, expects to employ 75 people worldwide by the end of this year. It has announced partnerships with two major makers of solar panels, Kyocera Solar Inc. and SunPower Corp., and it expects to announce more partners soon. The first panels with its inverters installed should be available for sale this summer.
Volume manufacturing of its devices by Celestica, an international contract manufacturer, started in April at its factory in Dongguan, China.
CEO Ron Van Dell said SolarBridge operates in a segment of the solar power market that accounts for about $3 billion a year in global sales. Much of the industry's focus so far has been on how to make solar panels more cheaply and efficiently. But now, Van Dell said, industry attention is shifting to power inverters, which can be another area for improving savings and reliability.
The company, which licenses technical discoveries made at the University of Illinois, uses advanced power electronics to create an inverter that it says will work for 25 years or longer and "harvest" more than 95 percent of the energy produced by solar panels.
2011年6月26日星期日
2011年6月19日星期日
The top five coolest ways to integrate renewable energy into the grid
Intermittent renewables at high penetrations will bring new challenges for the grid. But how big will they be? And is it true that wind and solar will necessarily need storage or natural gas back-up at high levels?
The International Energy Agency (IEA) wanted to know, so it modeled a variety of high-penetration scenarios in eight geographic regions around the world. Hugo Chandler, a senior policy analyst with the IEA, explains the organization's findings to Climate Progress:
Variability is not just some new phenomenon in grid management. What we found is that renewable energy is not fundamentally different. The criticisms of renewables often neglect the complementarities between different technologies and the way they can balance each other out if spread over certain regions and energy types.
Grid operators are constantly working to balance available supply with demand -- it's what they do. There are always natural variations that cause spikes in demand, reductions in supply, or create disturbances in frequency and voltage. Once you see there are a variety of ways to properly manage that variability, you start whittling away at the argument that you always need storage or a megawatt of natural gas backup for every megawatt of renewable energy.
Theoretical modeling is important. But what companies are doing in reality?
Here's five of the top methods for integrating renewable energy into the grid -- proving that intermittency isn't the showstopper that critics make it out to be. Explanations of each of these with videos are below.
Intelligent demand response is often called the "killer app" of the smart grid. Demand response is not a new concept -- but the "intelligent" part is still somewhat new.
The demand-response leader, EnerNOC, is now applying this concept to renewable energy. The company announced earlier this year that it would work with a Northwestern transmission operator to help manage demand to meet the fluctuating output of wind electricity in the system. EnerNOC President David Brewster calls it "the perfect dancing partner for wind." By ramping up demand at facilities during times of peak supply and lowering demand when supply drops off, the grid can respond to changing conditions in real time without the need for storage.
Microinverters and maximum power point trackers
Inverters are the gateway to the grid -- turning direct current electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to grid-friendly alternating current. Over the past several years, there has been a revolution in inverter technologies that allows project owners to more effectively regulate system performance. One technology, the microinverter, is installed on the back of individual panels, turning each module into its own unit and providing real-time data on how each is operating. Therefore, if clouds roll over a PV system, the "Christmas tree light effect" is avoided, and each panel still functions normally, maximizing the output of a system -- sometimes by 20 percent or more.
Speaking of maximizing output, that's where maximum power point trackers come in. These pieces of power electronics are also installed on the back of individual panels. But they're not microinverters; instead, they boost voltage to an optimal range for a central inverter, thus allowing the device to run more efficiently. By allowing a system owner to control a PV plant at the module level, you can boost performance on the module level and regulate voltage even as weather patterns change.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) wanted to know, so it modeled a variety of high-penetration scenarios in eight geographic regions around the world. Hugo Chandler, a senior policy analyst with the IEA, explains the organization's findings to Climate Progress:
Variability is not just some new phenomenon in grid management. What we found is that renewable energy is not fundamentally different. The criticisms of renewables often neglect the complementarities between different technologies and the way they can balance each other out if spread over certain regions and energy types.
Grid operators are constantly working to balance available supply with demand -- it's what they do. There are always natural variations that cause spikes in demand, reductions in supply, or create disturbances in frequency and voltage. Once you see there are a variety of ways to properly manage that variability, you start whittling away at the argument that you always need storage or a megawatt of natural gas backup for every megawatt of renewable energy.
Theoretical modeling is important. But what companies are doing in reality?
Here's five of the top methods for integrating renewable energy into the grid -- proving that intermittency isn't the showstopper that critics make it out to be. Explanations of each of these with videos are below.
Intelligent demand response is often called the "killer app" of the smart grid. Demand response is not a new concept -- but the "intelligent" part is still somewhat new.
The demand-response leader, EnerNOC, is now applying this concept to renewable energy. The company announced earlier this year that it would work with a Northwestern transmission operator to help manage demand to meet the fluctuating output of wind electricity in the system. EnerNOC President David Brewster calls it "the perfect dancing partner for wind." By ramping up demand at facilities during times of peak supply and lowering demand when supply drops off, the grid can respond to changing conditions in real time without the need for storage.
Microinverters and maximum power point trackers
Inverters are the gateway to the grid -- turning direct current electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to grid-friendly alternating current. Over the past several years, there has been a revolution in inverter technologies that allows project owners to more effectively regulate system performance. One technology, the microinverter, is installed on the back of individual panels, turning each module into its own unit and providing real-time data on how each is operating. Therefore, if clouds roll over a PV system, the "Christmas tree light effect" is avoided, and each panel still functions normally, maximizing the output of a system -- sometimes by 20 percent or more.
Speaking of maximizing output, that's where maximum power point trackers come in. These pieces of power electronics are also installed on the back of individual panels. But they're not microinverters; instead, they boost voltage to an optimal range for a central inverter, thus allowing the device to run more efficiently. By allowing a system owner to control a PV plant at the module level, you can boost performance on the module level and regulate voltage even as weather patterns change.
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