First Solar subsidiary Skytron, specialising in monitoring, control and supervision systems for utility-scale and commercial PV plants, will be deploying its technology at an 86.2MWp PV plant in South Africa.
The power plant is being built under the country’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPPPP), which is targeting 8.4GW of solar out of a total 18GW of renewables to be developed by 2030.
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Meeting the requirements of South Africa’s grid operator, ESKOM, Skytron will be fitting the Mulilo Sonnedix Prieska PV plant in Northern Cape with its supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software PVGuard, the control system skycontrol, a data logger, data server, 600 combiner boxes and skyCONNi-Sun Universal Weather Unit, which integrates different weather sensors into the PV plant’s communication network.
The REIPPPP has some domestic content requirements and to meet these, combiner box assembly – including integrated string current monitoring – was contracted to local partners.
Skytron is currently equipping 1.4GW of PV plants under development by Strata Solar with PVGuard software.
