Inverters Interview

1、How many MW's of Solar Inverters have been supplied by your company in India and how does the future look like?

In 2015, Huawei signed a 100 MW contract with India Waaree, which is abreakthrough. In 2016, Huawei sees India an essential inverter market. Our goal is1.2 GW. According to forecast by Mercom Capital Group, the PV power capacity planned for India in 2016 will be increased to over 4 GW and the market scale will double. The PV market in India will maintain rapid growth. By 2022, PV power target yield will increase from 20 GW to 100 GW. Huawei will bring more advanced and useful products and solutions to the Indian market to contribute to the prosperity of the PV industry in India.

2、Please enlighten our readers on the unique technology aspect of these inverters installed in India and its performance.

High efficiency up to 99%. Multiple MPP trackers realize real time and accurate string detection. The detection accuracy can reach 0.5%, 6 times higher than traditional centralized inverters. Multiple MPP trackers can also effectively reduce the impact and influence caused by shadowing and string mismatch, dramatically improving the yields by at least 2% for ground PV plants, and up to 5% and more for hill and mountain mounted PV plants.

Fully closed design ensures high level protection based on our mature and advanced telecom technology. IP65 protection makes our inverter versatile for all the hostile outdoor environment like high temperature, high dampness, high altitude, extreme cold, sandy, salt and mist areas.

In addition, we remove quick wear parts like external fans with natural cooling technology and fuses, which enable ZERO touch maintenance and guarantee human and property safety.

We use our own chipset Hisilicon and operating system to reduce the weight and heat dispersion. There are no quick wear parts like fuse and external fans, which ensures free maintenance. Furthermore, our inverters are open, supporting inputs of different equipment and parts like trackers and sensors of other industries.

Furthermore, we adopt the Power Line Communication (PLC) technology, allowing communication via power cable and removing communications cable. The PLC is cable-free, and the communication bandwidth is much higher than RS485. Additionally, the engineering is accordingly simplified and economic.

Our patented anti-PID module can avoid PID effect without PV-tie to ground directly, effectively guaranteeing human safety.

Our string inverters are in excellent condition for the 100 MW project with Waaree. The stable and high efficiency running is highly recognized by the Waaree. We expect more customers to choose and enjoy the high performance of our smart PV inverters.

3、Please enlighten our readers on the debate of "Central vs. String Inverters Design" Which concept is best suited for India and why.

String is better. The string inverter design is not simply ideal for rooftops but also widely adopted by large-scale PV plants. The string inverter design has been highly recognized by the public. In addition, we have compared the two solutions from different aspects. The string inverter design has better performance in view of safety, yields, system cost, installation, O&M, monitoring, environmental adaptability, and grid connection. It is tested and proved not simply in theory but also in the practical application from customers' projects. Our string inverters and solution have been widely applied in a single project over 50 MW both in China and overseas markets.

India has tropical extreme climate with high temperature and dampness. There is also a long rainy season. Huawei fully closed design inverter with IP65 protection guarantees the long term operation with safety and reliability. Multiple MPP trackers enable high accuracy detection and improve the yields by over 3%. Our smart PV inverters become the brain of the plant, realizing smart operation and maintenance with digital information and internet technology.

4、Please tell us in detail about your company (Company structure, Sales, Employees, Products & Solutions etc. ).

Huawei, a leading global information and communication technology solutions provider, is committed to creating maximum value for customers, with products and solutions deployed in over 170 countries, serving more than one third of the world’s population. Combining digital information technology, Internet technology and PV generation technology, Huawei provides innovative FusionSolar Smart PV solution and inverters with a wide application in Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific, etc. in 2015, Huawei inverter global shipment achieved 10.5 GW.

Huawei has 6 R&D centers specifically for Inverter products around the world with 800+ engineers, having received more than 100 patents of which 90% are invention patents. As a company, Huawei holds over 38,000 technology and design patents.

Huawei FusionSolar Smart PV solution is to take the whole PV plant as an entity and make improvement throughout the whole process, from the PV plant construction to maintenance. It can optimize initial investment, reduce maintenance costs, increase power generation and finally increase IRR. By delivering higher efficient power generation, smart operation, reliable safety, it will secure 25 years of constant investment proceeds to our customers.

5、What are the other products and solutions for Solar PV plant provided by your company and what are its technological features?

Apart from our smart PV controller, we have other products like smart array controller and smart management system. Smart array controller integrates data logger, PLC module, anti-PID module, and communication module. It dramatically simplifies the system and network establishment, reducing the potential fault parts. Smart management system is the core part of our smart PV solution. The O&M efficiency can be increased by over 50% through our smart PV solution. We develop the advanced system for both plant and corporation levels, which can realize mobile and remote operation and maintenance globally.

6、What are the resources in terms of manpower for sales, O&M and other aspects developed and present in the Indian market?

We have over 20 persons as local team which includes the sales, products, and service. The team will be further expanded with the market and sales growth. More local employees will be added to the sales and technical team. Huawei is of shared technology, service and production. We have over 5700 staff in India with 2700 focusing on R&D. Also we have the relevant warehouse and spare part centers in India to best serve the market.

7、Please tell us about the unique technological features of your products which are also distinguishing factors.

Multiple MPP trackers and high accuracy string detection highly improve the yields and reduce the power loss. IP65 protection enables high environm ent adaptability and application. Open platform design enables cross industry cooperation.

Power Line Communication technology allows communication via power cable and removes communication cable. The PLC is cable-free, and the communication b a n d wi d t h i s m u c h h i g h e r than RS485. Additionally, the e ngine e ring i s ac cordi ngl y simplified and economic.

Anti-PID Module. Huawei anti-PID Module for Smart PV Plant is a solution to avoid PID effect without PV-tie to ground directly.

Natural Cooling Design. There are no external fans. The thermal conductive coefficient of gum fed inside the enclosure is 30 times higher than air. In addition, integrated Molding Cast Aluminum enclosure avoids contact heat resistance between fins and the radiating substrate, allowing stable radiation performance.

8、Kindly enlighten us on the ongoing R&D within the company and the way forward for its technology, products and services. What's your annual R&D budget?

(1) Huawei currently has 176,000 employees, among which 79,000 are engaged in R&D.

(2) In 2015, Huawei's R&D investment is about 50 billion RMB, which accounts for 15.1% of its revenue.

(3) In 2015, the estimated sales revenue is about 390 billion RMB, an increase of 37% from a year earlier.

Huawei invests at least 10% of its revenue in R&D every year to maintain its leading edge in the world in terms of technologies and products. Huawei is also therefore recognized as a leader in technical innovation in the industry. The aim of innovation is to maximize value for customers and provide cutting edge, high quality, and cost-efficient products and solutions to customers.

9、Have your products won any award recently? Kindly enlighten us in detail about this product.

10、What is your Top 5 Advice to a Project Developer in India while choosing your products for its Solar PV Plant?

A.about investment: Apart from initial investment, take more consideration about LCOE. The designed life cycle for PV plants is over 20 years. Lower initial investment with poor quality equipment or simple solution may bring happy beginning but sad ending with big power loss, high O&M cost, and safety issues.

B.about brand choosing: Product quality and good solution are important. A reliable business partner or brand is more important to fulfill the task to carry out the service through the full lifetime up to 25 years for PV plants.

C.about solution: Choose the right products for the right solution. The right technical route can ensure that we march for the right direction and avoid technical change or shift in the middle.

D.A bout O&M: Do not overlook the daily operation and maintenance cost. It occupies a large part of the running cost in the long run. Find the effective and smart solution or management to improve the O&M efficiency and save the cost.

E.about safety and reliability: Safety is the top priority for plants running. Apart from the daily safety inspection and prevention work, choosing the right equipment and solution to guarantee the safety and reliability is a better way or the shortcut. One accident may turn all into nothing.

11、How does Huawei guarantee quality?

Huawei Global Compliance & Testing Center (GCTC) is a comprehensive laboratory that integrates EMC, RF, Telecom, safety and environment reliability tests, and is recognized by international authoritative organizations, including CNAS, ATLA, MET, ITS CETECOM. GCTC offers services of testing, compliance, and design consultations to Huawei products in accordance with the ISO/IEC17025. Huawei GCTC adopts not only traditional testing equipment but takes the lead to use other testing equipment to conduct the combined stress tests of temperature, humidity and corrosive dust, high temperature rain tests, simulated solar radiation tests, and lightening tests. These tests pose higher requirements on the adaptation of Huawei products.

Huawei inverters need to pass the stringent tests of Huawei GCTC. The tests comprise two parts: the short- term and the long-term reliability tests, and each part also contains many tests. The short-term tests include HALT test, high/low temperature tests, rain test, icing test, low pressure test, humid dust test, lightening test, EMC tests (electromagnetic radiation, surge, static, lightening, etc.), and safety regulations test. The long-term tests include temperature cycle test (TC), high temperature operation bias (THOB), lifespan test (LLT), and outfield exposure test (high temperature, humidity and salt). The time of long-term reliability tests all exceeds 1000 hours and some of the tests even last over a year. The reliability tests of Huawei inverters cover many actual scenarios, such as high humidity, rain, salt/ humid dust corrosion, solar radiation, capricious temperatures, lightening strokes, high altitudes, and extreme temperatures (– 60°C, 100°C).

12、What is Huawei's position in the global market and how strong is Huawei's R&D?

In 2014, Huawei became one of the Top 10 manufacturers with a global order amount of 5.5 GW and shipment of 4 GW.

In 2015, Huawei achieved a global order amount of 15 GW and a shipment of 10.5 GW (China: 8.5 GW, overseas China: 2 GW).

Core inverter components are manufactured and assembled in Huawei South Factory, Songshan Lake, Dongguan. The factory can manufacture up to 80,000 inverters per month.

Inverter Team

1. 800+ R&D engineers, 10% of which are non-Chinese employees

2. 100+ inventions and patents

3. Six R&D centers

Nuremberg, Germany: Architecture & design centre Stockholm, Sweden: Algorithm & topology research centre Shanghai, China: Product design centre

Shenzhen, China:

Product engineering & manufacturing centre

Beijing and Chengdu, China: FusionSolar R&D centre

Santa Clara, United States: Innovative R&D centre

FR:Shine Magazine