Satcon Technology Corporation(R)(NASDAQ CM: SATC), a provider of utility scale power solutions for the renewable energy market, announced the launch of the Satcon(TM) Solstice(R) 500 kilowatt system solution, now available in North America. The Solstice 500 kilowatt system expands upon Satcon's portfolio of industry leading solar PV inverter technologies designed to address the needs of large multi -megawatt, utility scale systems, including the PowerGate Plus(R) 500 kW, the Prism(TM) 1 MW medium voltage package solution, and the 1 MW PowerGate Plus inverter solution.
Satcon Solstice is the industry's first complete distributed power conversion system, delivering fine grained power harvesting and control with advanced utility ready grid interconnection. The 500 kW solution will join the previously launched 100 kW UL and the 125 kW CE systems to provide for a wider range of system designs that can be addressed with the Solstice solution suite.
Solstice revolutionizes large utility and commercial solar power plants by allowing the central inverter to monitor, manage and control the array at less than 3 kilowatt increments, as well as optimize each string with its own individual Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). The combination of fine grained harvesting of each panel string along with a highly efficient central inverter design insures the Solstice platform will deliver more power over the lifetime of the PV system by increasing total system harvest optimization and system uptime and safety. This results in an increase in total power production by 5-12 percent over designs using standard inverters, while simultaneously reducing the overall system material costs by 20- 25 percent.
"With the first 100kW sites producing power today and proving significant performance improvements, the addition of the 500 kilowatt system enables us to drive the leading edge of solar innovation deeper into the large scale commercial and utility markets," said Steve Rhoades, Satcon's President and Chief Executive Officer. "As the next generation solution for this utility scale category, Solstice will radically change the value equation of large scale solar power production, as the gains in system wide performance is directly proportional to the size of the installations."