OMRON

Press Release

April 11th, 2016

In Northern Italy 1740 hours of solar productivity in one year

This is the real experience in a PV plant in Piacenza (Northern Italy) where the wide range of input voltage of the Omron Inverter maximizeproductivity hoursin the year

The best solution to repair at the uncertainty of the incentives scheme experienced recently in Italyisto increase solar productivity hours during the year: this is the experience of TrediElettronica, the owner of one 1MWp plant near Piacenza whereenergy output reached 1740 hoursin one year, a high number compared with productivity of other plants nearby, with an average of about 1000 hours per year.

That is a photovoltaic plantusing solar tracking systems, on a fivehectares field, with 98biaxial solar trackers, each one with an arrayof 72 square metres and at a distance of 20 metres the one from the other.

The plant, connectedto the grid in 2010, has been designed with an Inverter for eachtracking pole, to have the control on any single part of the plant and to be able to find the exact point of failure.

The plant has 98 Inverters: 48 of them are KP100L from Omron, with efficiencypeak 97,5%. The other 50inverters are from another supplier, witha higher peak efficiency (98%), confirmed by real measurements on field. At that time Omron did not have enough pieces on stock to satisfy the whole request.

Daniele De Gaspari, the designer of the plant, is theowner, together with his brother, Danilo de Gaspari, of TrediElettronica. After five year of real experience, he says: “the efficiency of a photovoltaic plant should be measured in a period. In my experiencethe portion of the plant with the Omron Inverter produces in one year about 5% more energy output. That’s why we are going to install the Omron Inverter on the whole plant replacing step by step the non-Omron inverter present, to have a higher number of solar productivity in one year”

The reasons why the portion of the plant with the Omron Inverter has better performance are:

  • The widerrange of input voltage (225-850 Vdc), thanks to which the Omron Inverter can start producing energy very early in the morning, even if voltage is low, and switch off later at evening.
  • The 3 MPPTs, which providethree different inputs of the Inverter which can be connected to three different strings and then guarantee the best productivity at each time of the day, even early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the shadows of the other arrays of the plant are present.

We have a very good relation with Omron, which has high quality products and a very professional post-sales service. The inverter isthe “heart” of the PV plant, andwhen the plant uses tracking systems the inverter works for many hours aday. Failure occurs, but Omron has a very efficient post sales service andfailed inverters are back in field in 2 or 3 days.

Incentives are not stable, but our plant has a very good design and this is the best way to keep a good return on investment. Our winning choice to have a solar tracking system, with one inverter for each array, gives us the opportunity to have only 1% of productivity downgrade in case of inverter failure, always solved in a very short time.

Omron Corporation

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Omron Corporation, with headquarter in Kyoto, Japan, and is worldwide market leader for automation components, with revenues of 5,4 billion euros. Founded in 1933 has more than 37.000 employees in 36 countries and supplies products and services for industrial automation, electronic and healthcare. The company has offices all over the world and is present in 22 European Countries with 1500 employees. The company is strongly committed to Research and Innovation, investing every year 7% of the revenues in R&D.

Omron produces and sells photovoltaic inverter since 1994 and in twenty years sold more than one million photovoltaic Invers of KP series. Since 1995 produces and sells Power Monitoring Device.

Omron

Environmental Solution Business (part of Industrial Automation Business)

Omron - Environmental Solution Business is responsible for the photovoltaic business and for Power Monitoring Devices in Europe. These activities are part of the brand “Energy Efficiency”, which include all Omron activities in Renewable Energies and in Energy Efficiency.

TrediElettronica

TrediElettronicas.r.l. Piacenza was founded in 1985 with the mission to design microprocessor electronic boards. The company is focused on electronics, information technology and industrial automation.

Per ulteriori informazioni:
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Olga Calenti – - Cell. +39 348 9854037

Erminia Corsi – - Cell. +39 348 9854041