A history of being recognized for innovation, design and corporate social responsibility makes Delta a strong solar player. Its wall-mounted 80-kW string inverter offers a solution for the commercial and industrial space. We chatted with Jim Burns, director of sales for Delta Products Corporation’s PV inverters power systems business group to learn more.
Jim Burns, director of sales for Delta Products Corporation’s PV inverters power systems business group
Solar Power World: Tell me about Delta’s roots and how this has played into what it’s doing now in solar?
Jim Burns: Delta Products Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Electronics Incorporated, a 50-year-old leader in power electronics and power conversion solutions. Delta is also passionate about reducing global warming. It was included in the Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) of the 2015 CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project).
This strong background in electronics in other industries and attention to reducing climate change through better value and performance made it well-positioned to enter the solar inverter market in 2009. Delta has achieved high efficiencies switching power supplies (over 90%) and telecom power (up to 97.5%) and has brought that to PV inverters with up to 98.8% efficiency.
Since its formation, our PV inverters systems group has deployed more than 4GW of high reliability PV solar inverters to tier 1 developers, utilities, integrators, EPCs, distributors and PV inverter manufacturers worldwide. This year, we are expanding to directly selling our solutions under the Delta brand across the U.S. This has been mutually beneficial to our end customers and to Delta from a pricing and margin perspective, respectively.
SPW: Tell me more about Delta’s M80U wall-mounted 80-kW string inverter.
Delta’s M80U Photovoltaic (PV) inverter
JB: Delta Products Corporation’s continued mission is to provide innovative energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow. All of our products and services are conceived, designed, produced and delivered under this corporate mission and the advanced features and superior value of the RPI Inverter Series 80kW inverter exemplifies this.
With the hyper competitive pricing environment over the past six years, the solar market is often faced with making performance level tradeoffs in favor of the lowest pricing. Building off an efficiency of 98.8%, our 80-kW RPI Series system sits in the sweet spot of price and performance. Also, to maximize space, the inverter can be easily mounted on the foothold of the PV panels without the use of a house or container. This makes it ideal for commercial and industrial applications including rooftops and carports, as well as both small and large utility scale ground mount projects.
By expanding our footprint past the standard 60-kW building block, we are able to achieve significant cost efficiencies, allowing us to deliver a highly cost effective, high performance solution to the market. In addition, our solutions are all designed from the ground up to deliver improved project design flexibility, ease of installation, faster delivery due to short lead times, lower cost commissioning and O&M servicing performed by less skilled labor having no impact on inverter warranty.
SPW: At SPI, Delta also introduced its 480-Vac,125-kW power conditioning system for commercial and industrial systems. How does this system work to support solar storage?
JB: Our power conditioning system is the intelligent device that enables the successful integration of PV assets onto the grid. Our solution conditions the power and authorize dispatch to adjust dynamically for changes in sunlight, loads or tariff rates. It acts as both the sensor and the intelligent control device, managing the critical roles of both smoothing the power output and decreasing the power variation of the PV system. This helps to ensure that each power plant is more than just a good citizen on the grid, it enables them to become instrumentation for grid quality and reliability.