eIQ Energy’s has agreed to supply its Parallel Solar technology for a new 1.2MW solar installation at Granite Construction’s aggregate and hot mix facility in Coalinga, California. Building work on the project, which will provide 50% of the facility's energy requirements, began earlier this month, with grid connection expected to be achieved later this summer.
eIQ’s Parallel Solar technology will enable the system’s eIQ vBoost DC-to-DC converter modules to function in parallel with Solar Frontier’s CIS thin-film solar modules. The energy generated by these arrays will be converted into AC by Siemens inverters.
“This is an especially exciting project for us, because it validates the economics of Parallel Solar on thin-film arrays at the megawatt scale,” eIQ’s chief executive officer, Oliver Janssen, said. “We’ve released studies that clearly show savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars on an array of this type and size, by eliminating much of the wiring, combiner boxes, and installation labor needed for traditional series-wiring architectures. And that’s before taking into account the improvements in energy harvest from our integrated MPPT and the elimination of power-sapping interactions between panels.”
“Working with eIQ Energy, Siemens, and Granite Construction, we were able to put together a very strong business case. Once again, it’s emerged that the ecological solution is also the economic solution, and our panels have already begun arriving at the installation site,” Solar Frontier vice president and chief operating officer Greg Ashley added.
The Coalinga plant is the latest addition to Granite Construction’s burgeoning solar portfolio at its California and Arizona facilities, which now stands at 1.7MW. The company is also moving forward with plans to further offset its energy requirements by installing PV systems at its construction materials facilities.