The PV commercial and utility-scale operations & maintenance (O&M) market has been growing in tandem with the growth in global installations. Once seen as an ancillary market, its presence and significance has taken on a new meaning in recent years and is providing innovations and business practices that only enhance the PV project market.
PV inverter manufacturer KACO new energy has said it has signed a 50MW supply deal with the Turkish project developer, Aldo Grup for planned projects through the end of 2017.
Industrial technology firm ABB is restructuring its multiple market divisions into four core divisions with its solar energy offerings including PV inverters joining its Electrification Products segment from its existing Discrete Automation and Motion (DM) division.
Schneider Electric is launching the ‘Conext SmartGen’ an intelligent, cloud-connected 1500 volt utility scale power conversion system, with a suite of supporting software solutions called the ‘Power EcoSystem’, including the cloud-based monitoring and control solution ‘Conext Advisor 2’.
The US Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has highlighted continued PV system cost reductions in its latest quarterly report, ‘US Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmark Q1 2016’.
Fully digitized solar power plants will be the next focus for improving efficiencies in the solar PV industry according, to Guoguang Chen, general manager of inverter manufacturer Huawei’s Smart PV Europe Business.
KACO new energy is launching the blueplanet gridsave 1000 TL3: a storage solution in the megawatt-class. The unit assists utility companies, distribution grid operators, EPCs and large companies to balance energy generation and consumption on the power grid.
EDF Renewable Services (EDF RS) is in the process of taking over the operations and maintenance (O&M) responsibilities for 206 solar projects spanning across 13 states from New Jersey to Hawaii that total around 200MW.
Globally, the top 10 inverter suppliers accounted for around 75% of shipments in 2015. In India, the market is even more concentrated as the top 10 suppliers accounted for over 85% of shipments. Despite this, there is intense price competition and churning in supplier landscape. Bridge to India's Jasmeet Khurana investigates.
Microinverter producer Enphase Energy said it was restructuring due to the competitive environment with the loss of approximately 11% of its global workforce and the elimination certain non-core but unspecified projects.
