ABC News / AP story on Solar Electric Systems [RE-wrenches]

Bill Brooks billb at endecon.com
Tue Jun 8 12:44:53 PDT 2004


 

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William,

The APCC inverter was my first inverter (I grew up on grid-connected systems
rather than off-grid). As Chris said, it was assembled by MIT engineers with
great care and never got to substantial volume for real manufacturing
(unfortunately for us). APCC lost their shirt and their board forbad them
from doing PV inverters ever again.

Anyway, I believe the inverter does run on MOSFETs and the max dc input
voltage was 300 Volts with a minimum of about 225 Volts, if memory serves me
correctly. It was beautifully designed and incorporated ideas that inverter
manufacturers have borrowed and stolen over the past 20 years. It was quiet,
passively cooled, 93% efficiency, low harmonic distortion, consistently max
power tracked, passed all the islanding tests the utility could throw at it,
and it worked. There is no doubt that technology has dramatically improved
over the past 20 years, but Manny Landsman of APCC and his colleagues (now
all multimillionaires) are still probably among the brightest engineers ever
to work in our industry. We need more like them.

That's why I say that the bar was set very high with one of the first grid
interactive inverters. The SMA inverters were the first to come close to the
performance of the APCC inverters (maybe the last version of the Omnion 2400
got somewhat close after copying much of the APCC inverter), with much newer
technology. It remains to be seen if they are as good--I truly hope they are
since there are so many in circulation.

We need articles from homeowners that say, "my Trace SW has been operating
flawlessly for 5 years," or "I have a SunnyBoy that has run for 3 years
without a hiccup and keeps crankin' the juice." And we need to redo that
moron's article to talk about the wonders of a PV system that lasts 20 years
with little or no maintenance.

Bill.

-----Original Message-----
From: William Korthof [mailto:wkorthof at earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 9:56 PM
To: RE-wrenches at topica.com
Subject: RE: ABC News / AP story on Solar Electric Systems [RE-wrenches]

20 years operation is a noteworthy achievement for the
inverters, and it at least warrants mention for the PV.

Anyone know what semiconductor they were using
(I presume mosfet). What was the array voltage?


/wk

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