Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

In what the company calls its largest single order to date, Satcon Technology has signed a global master supply deal with Czech private power utility Energy 21 to deliver 30.5MW of its PowerGate Plus photovoltaic inverters. The Satcon units will be used in 15 solar power systems in the Czech Republic.

A familiar name in the power generation world has moved into the solar photovoltaic inverter space. Using technology from its wind-power converters, GE has developed a 600KW PV inverter platform that features power electronics, monitoring, and controls for large-scale, multi-megawatt solar installations. The inverter features a peak conversion efficiency of >97% and a CEC weighted efficiency of >96.5%.

Sustainable Energy Technologies has begun deliveries of its solar power inverters to Tejados Industriales de Fotovoltaica (TIF), a leading Spanish EPC company, affiliated with Signet Solar, for a 1.8MW thin-film photovoltaic solar power plant located in the Blizkovice region of the Czech Republic. The Canadian inverter company says the installation marks the first time that its parallel system architecture power devices will be used in a megawatt-scale PV plant.

Because of increased demand for its grid-connected solar inverters, Danfoss plans to expand its manufacturing capacity to 1GW at its production facilities in Graasten, Denmark. The company says that the expansion will be completed in the first quarter of 2010.