GE Vernova has launched its new 6 MVA, 2,000-VDC utility-scale inverter, with a multi-megawatt pilot installation in North America. This initiative is aimed at further reducing solar energy costs and accelerating the transition to renewable energy and decarbonization. The inverter can boost power output by 30% within the same footprint, reducing costs and improving scalability for solar farms.
“At GE Vernova, we are driving the next generation of utility-scale solar solutions,” said Ed Torres, Business Leader, GE Vernova Solar & Storage Solutions business. “Inverters are critical to increasing solar capacity and ensuring efficient energy conversion. Our latest innovations will help solar farms maximize output and reliability, playing a key role in meeting growing energy demands and advancing renewable energy adoption.”
GE Vernova’s FLEXINVERTER 2,000 is set to debut in a multi-megawatt solar park as a pilot installation in North America, expected to be operational by Q1 2025. The company is collaborating with Shoals Technologies Group and an industry PV module supplier on this project. GE Vernova will provide the 2,000-V inverter for the solar park, while Shoals Technologies will supply the electrical balance of system solutions. The other collaborating supplier will provide the PV modules.
“We’re thrilled to be part of this collaboration with other solar innovation leaders,” said Jeff Tolnar, President of Shoals Technologies Group. “We believe this effort moves the market toward an even lower cost of solar deployments which we anticipate will spur adoption and further advance solar as the most economical alternative to fossil fuels.”
News item from GE Vernova
The higher the voltage the better as the step up transformer feeding the transmission line can be any where from 230KVA to 500KVA with different inputs from the wound generators either water, fuel or heat driven. this could look like a very large generator of 16.5KVA stepped up to 230KVA, this seems to be what Hoover dam is doing. Every transformer step up or down is about a 3% power loss from the generation station to end user.
In this day and age of electronics and new SiC switching transistors being developed and put into systems, there may be a day where one is using some kind of Terra capacitor electronically creating 20KVA to 50KVA output at the inverter switched energy output into the transmission line step up transformer. GE has already proven their earlier grid inverter designs can be used as black start capable when needed from the site’s ESS facility. Large heavy rotating mass generator alternators are not needed for a local micro-grid to macro-grid installation leveraging energy storage and fast response electronics to keep grids out of cascading grid failures. Now electric utilities need to decide on a safe, cheap and Long Term Energy Storage facility like maybe redox flow batteries or the new Form Energy Iron/Air, “rust batteries” can be designed for 100 hour energy storage, this is where distributed micro/macro-grids should be designed to use. The slow to accept paradigm shift that one could run a system off of two large solar PV farms, both could have an ESS facility and each facility could be designed for daytime use or the suns energy could be stored during the day and dispatched at night. In the meantime any over generation from say a wind farm could be captured by one or both solar PV farms depending on overall power block design characteristics.