Webinar Recap: What’s in Store for Commercial Solar in 2021 — PV, Inverters, and Racking

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Additional Resources from the Show

• SolarEdge Presentation
• Unirac Presentation
• JA Solar Presentation

WEBINAR HIGHLIGHTS

‘Think Gig’ with SolarEdge Inverters (02:33)

Our hour kicked off with Ben Frank, Director of National Sales with SolarEdge Technologies, and a past Solar Town Hall guest speaker. Residential solar contractors may be familiar with home-scale solutions like the SolarEdge Energy Hub, but the company also is a major player in the commercial solar segment. SolarEdge’s commercial inverters accommodate larger string lengths and multiple azimuths and tilt on the same strings. They also allow for redesigns on the fly and module-level performance monitoring.

Watch Ben Frank discuss SolarEdge’s AdvantEdge Program, which protects system owners against power production losses caused by power optimizer downtime — covering enrolled sites for a 2-year period, including truckroll and compensation for tracked lost production. Learn more about SolarEdge’s new three-phase commercial inverters (17.3kW @208V; 40kW @480V) and three-phase inverters with Synergy Technology (50kW @208V; 80kW, 120 kW @480V). Browse their commercial solar projects case studies for PDF briefings on how SolarEdge products solved a design challenge. Discover how SolarEdge’s “Best of Both Worlds” architecture ensures maximum energy yield at a lower O&M cost.

Unirac — Founded by Installers, For Installers (19:44)

Watch and learn why Unirac is a solutions company for commercial projects contractors and designers. Look for Ted and Jonah’s slides of their commercial project case studies — including a Mandalay Bay Convention Center installation (6.4MW) in Las Vegas. And look for Unirac’s informative product webinars — there’s one on February 24 — divulging the wind tunnel testing secrets behind the GridFlex system. REGISTER NOW »

Harvest the Sunshine with JA Solar (32:20)

Finally, bringing in the PV module perspective was Thomas Nielsen, Director of Sales with JA Solar. With nearly 10% of the global market share, JA Solar began as a solar cell producer — and, in fact, continues to produce cells and wafers for other brands downstream. For the U.S. market, JA Solar ships p-type mono PERC products — which it promises increases towards 24.00% efficiency by 2022H2.

As heavily discussed around the industry (including our own Solar Tech Talk), larger PV modules are the near and immediate future. JA Solar itself anticipates half-cell bifacial modules becoming the dominant product and 182mm wafer as the dominant technology — and is shifting its production from 158 to 182 in 2021. Watch and learn about JA Solar’s product development roadmap from its 158 Deep Blue 1.0 Series to the 166 Deep Blue 2.0 Series to its 182 Deep Blue 3.0 Series; the nuances of MBB and circular ribbon design; and JA Solar’s special assurances for products shipped through BayWa r.e. Solar Systems.

There’s even more to geek out on in the closing Q&A, from global supply chain angles to weight limit solutions to racking accommodations for larger modules. Queue this webinar to your podcast playlist and share it with your team. Here’s to a year of new opportunities and savvy foresight for your commercial solar ventures — and be sure to stay in close touch with Guillaume and our BayWa r.e. Solar Systems team for all your questions and C&I equipment needs.

Guillaume Casanova is Director of Commercial Solutions at BayWa r.e. Solar Systems (USA). He brings more than 12 years of experience in wealth management, market analysis, and renewables industry partnerships to our team. Contact Guillaume at guillaume.casanova@baywa-re.com.