16 farmers in South Korea are benefitting from a newly connected PV (photovoltaic) plant installed on their land. The park will provide elderly farmers, unable to continue working the land with an additional source of income. The solar plant will feed the national grid under a distributed power generation contract with the local government.
ABB has supplied 16 PVS-100 string inverters for this ground-mounted solar installation generating a total power output of 1.6MW. The PV plant is predicted to produce around 2,000 MWh of electricity per year and will supply approximately 560 homes in the region.
“We have selected the PVS-100 due to its high performance and flexibility. By splitting the field into 16 separate sections with 100 kW output each, we could allow more farmers to benefit from this project,” commented one of the land owners. “This power plant is an important alternative income source for us. Product stability and reliability are key factors since we are not electrical experts, but general users. With the ABB PVS-100, we are looking forward to a product lifetime of 20 years or more.”
The three-phase outdoor string inverter provides greater capacity without compromising on versatility through its six MPPT (maximum power point tracking) input configuration, the highest available on the market. Thus, PV modules are operating at the most efficient voltage and energy harvesting is optimized even when shadows are cast across the land.
Hyun-Mo Chung, local marketing & sales manager, Electrification business, ABB states: “With this technology and our all-in-one design, which integrates a string combiner box solution with DC disconnect and AC wiring compartment, we provide our customers with the highest flexibility in their PV design. Logistics and installation costs can be reduced by up to 50 percent as fewer inverters are required.”
For this plant in South Korea, the string inverter is converting the direct current from the solar panels into alternating current.
The PVS-100 range provides an Aurora Vision cloud connected inverter solution for cost efficient decentralized photovoltaic systems and is suitable for both large-scale commercial and industrial ground mounted and rooftop applications. It offers a unique sun-to-socket solution, meeting increasing market demand for cost-effective platforms offering high-power string inverters.
ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a technology leader that is driving the digital transformation of industries. With a history of innovation spanning more than 130 years, ABB has four customer-focused, globally leading businesses: Electrification, Industrial Automation, Motion, and Robotics & Discrete Automation, supported by the ABB Ability™ digital platform. ABB’s Power Grids business will be divested to Hitachi in 2020. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about 147,000 employees. www.abb.com
