Fronius USA installed a new 211 kW rooftop solar array, enabling it to do more testing and slashing its electricity bills by a fifth in the first month.
A 20 percent reduction in an electricity bill is even more impressive when one considers that the company employs hundreds of workers at a gargantuan 400,000-square-foot manufacturing plant and research and development center in the AmeriPlex at the Port business park.
The privately held Austrian company started doing research outside of its European headquarters for the first time in its 70-year history when it opened its U.S. headquarters in Portage a few years ago. Fronius has since installed more than 500 modules on the roof in order to harvest the sun’s energy, boost its research capability and develop new products. The panel can generate up to 30 percent of the energy needed to run the facility, which includes corporate offices, a sophisticated welding lab and a solar inverter manufacturing area.
Indiana Economic Development Corp. President Eric Doden was on hand Tuesday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the roof.
People frequently ask why Fronius installed solar panels in the often snow-blitzed Northwest Indiana of all places, when the U.S. solar industry has largely clustered in California, said Solar Energy Division Director Thomas Enzendorfer. But the company’s goal is to make solar energy mainstream, which is why it’s in the Midwest.
“This is not a California phenomenon any more,” he said. “This is in the heartland. It’s not a superficial idea any more.”
At the Portage facility, researchers can test the solar panels during all four seasons, when it’s overcast, and when they get sullied with light dirt from the nearby steel mills, Enzendorfer said. They have been positioning panels in different directions of the roof to test real-world conditions and compare the energy generation of flat roof panels with canted panels that actively follow the sun around.
“When we selected this facility here for our North American operations, we were looking to establish a strong North American presence,” he said. “We’re testing how our products perform under different circumstances, not just ideal circumstances but not-so-ideal circumstances.”
Solar Energy Division Head of System Support Martin Beran said the array will help researchers make current Fronius products more reliable and develop new products, such as to store solar energy so it can be used when it’s dark.
“We started this product one and a half years ago and we learn as we go,” he said. “We mimic a residential system here. We mimic a commercial system here. We test with shading, with non-perfect conditions. As the industry develops, it’s important to show that solar makes sense in some not-so-perfect conditions.”
Fronius is constantly innovating and has significant room to grow in the still-half-occupied building, where workers build inverters that change the current of solar energy so it can flow into the electric grid, Enzendorfer said. They also develop custom welding machines that have been used to weld steel to aluminum and that the trendy electric car company Telsa uses in its production facilities.
“This is great, but it’s just the beginning,” Beran said.
Article source: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/fronius-aims-to-make-solar-energy-mainstream/article_8ea8722a-ec59-5a8a-a82a-14613b519fc6.html