Dear customers, partners, colleagues, and solar enthusiasts, I cordially welcome you to this first issue of the SolarEdge
e-newsletter!
The past few months have been extremely exciting for us. Since our European launch at Intersolar 2009, we have rapidly advanced towards commercializing our Distributed Power Harvesting and Monitoring system. Agreements with leading module manufacturers and system integrators including BP-Solar, Schott Solar, and Gehrlicher Solar have been announced, while several agreements with additional key players in the USA, Europe and Asia have been signed; Inverter certification was completed for the main European markets including Germany, France and Spain. SolarEdge is now focusing on ramping manufacturing capabilities towards mass production in Q4/09, and preparing for its North America launch at the Solar Power International conference, this coming October.
Since our launch, we’ve been pleasantly overwhelmed by the extent of interest and support received from PV installers worldwide, who are facing the challenges of lost PV energy, and high complexity and cost on a daily basis. We are passionate about architecting smarter distributed solutions and look forward to maximizing your energy production.
Guy Sella, CEO

A SolarEdge system installed by a German PV integrator demonstrates how SolarEdge can maximize energy output in real-life scenarios. The SolarEdge system, composed of PowerBox-integrated modules and a SolarEdge SE5000 inverter, was installed at this site alongside an identical reference system with the same type of modules connected to an inverter of the leading brand. The two systems were exposed to the same conditions, to allow performance comparisons over time. As seen in the photo, both systems were partially shaded by equally sized wooden beams, which simulates shading caused by typical obstructions such as lighting poles, vents, chimneys, etc. The shading covers only about 0.5% of the entire array (a few cells). Nevertheless, the impact of this small shade is dramatic, as measured by calibrated AC energy meters. Over the past two months the SolarEdge system produced 4.8% more energy than the “standard” system, and up to 8% more energy on some days.

The chart illustrates SolarEdge weekly energy gain compared to the leading regular inverter.

Photon Magazine recently analyzed some of the sources of unavoidable power loss inherent in PV sites based on traditional inverters, and how distributed power harvesting solutions, including SolarEdge’s, can overcome them to maximize energy production.
According to Photon, when traditional inverters are employed, unequal module illumination caused by non-uniform module positioning, partial shading or even dirt can “reduce the power of the entire string — the weakest link always determines the power of the entire chain”. Installers cannot ensure such “military uniformity” at all times — that’s where module-level MPP tracking technologies such as SolarEdge’s enter the picture to optimize the energy output of each module. Photon acknowledges the great interest in power optimization technologies, and mentions the cooperation between SolarEdge and leading module manufacturers. The article discusses the importance of reliability, and notes that in comparison with competing technologies “SolarEdge’s MTBF is considerably higher, according to the manufacturer – almost 1,200 years”. Photon compares SolarEdge pricing and alternative solutions’ pricing, and comments that SolarEdge can offer lower pricing because its PowerBoxes are offered as part of a package that also includes the SolarEdge simplified inverter: “The money saved on the simplified inverter can be invested in the power optimizers instead.”

Read all the details in the Photon Magazine August issue.

The SolarEdge solution includes built-in monitoring, which enables continuous tracking of the performance of each module as well as the string and inverter. The system also alerts when faults and inefficiencies occur. Data is transmitted over the existing power line, and can be viewed online via a web portal.
Such high resolution visibility can greatly improve system uptime while reducing operation and maintenance cost, by providing immediate installation feedback, earlier fault detection, and detailed remote troubleshooting. Truck rolls can be saved, and well informed maintenance teams can spend their time in the field more efficiently.

One of the key monitoring features visualizes the entire field at module-level. Faulty components are automatically highlighted on a logical wiring schema, and immediately located on the site physical layout map, for effective fault analysis and navigation.