New Alliance Aimed At BOS Cost Reduction
Solar industry companies Ampt, KACO new energy, LTi REEnergy, and REFUsol Inc. announced the launch of the HDPV Alliance, an industry alliance aimed at reducing photovoltaic (PV) balance of system (BOS) costs while increasing energy production from PV plants. The HDPV Alliance leverages open technology standards to optimize the design and deployment of inverters, cabling, combiners and associated labor to deliver a lower total system cost and higher performance. Companies that join the Alliance are able to offer differentiated value and make it easy for their customers to identify and source products featuring the HDPV advantage.
Also joining founders Ampt, KACO new energy, LTi REEnergy, and REFUsol in the announcement of HDPV are members ZNShine, Shoals Technologies Group, DECK Monitoring, Eoplly, Amphenol, meteocontrol, Suniva, Next Generation Energy, AlsoEnergy and Upsolar.
"The HDPV Alliance brings significant value to the industry," said Forrest Collins, Senior Systems Engineer at juwi solar Inc. "As a global developer of PV systems, we look for products that lower costs, and we prefer suppliers that collaborate to ensure compatibility over time. By creating standards, the HDPV Alliance does both."
The HDPV Alliance was created in response to the solar industry's ever-increasing pressure to drive down system costs. Ampt, KACO new energy, LTi REEnergy, and REFUsol founded the Alliance to bring together members around a common vision for the development and adoption of lower cost and higher performance PV systems using open standards for HDPV-compliant inverters. HDPV inverters deliver up to twice the power at a higher efficiency than the same inverter operating in a normal mode. Doubling the rated power is equivalent to cutting cost in cents per watt (¢/W) in half. With HDPV inverters, systems also can have more PV modules in a series string to save up to fifty percent on DC BOS costs. The HDPV label identifies products and services as compatible with Alliance standards, and gives an edge to members who will have a more cost-effective solution that provides superior ROI.
"The solar industry is ripe for innovations that increase system performance and reliability while lowering total costs," said MJ Shiao, Senior Analyst, Solar Markets at GTM Research. "Initiatives like HDPV's open standard will help drive industry focus away from individual component costs towards total project economics."
The HDPV Alliance is open to new members who want to offer HDPV branded products or services. Companies throughout the PV industry are encouraged to join, including system developers and engineering, procurement and construction professionals (EPCs), manufacturers or distributors of inverters, modules, BOS components, software monitoring and O&M providers.
