February 20, 2008


Bend, OR, USA: PV Powered to Launch Two New Inverter Models

Inverter manufacturer, PV Powered is introducing two new inverters to the company's product range, the PVP75kW and PVP100kW. Production shipments of the PVP75kW and PVP100kW will begin in April. They are backed by a 10-year nationwide warranty, with extended warranties available.

PV Powered's New 100kW Inverter

To build exceptional long-term reliability into its new commercial inverters, PV Powered established design rules and techniques adapted from industries with uncompromising mission-critical reliability requirements, including aerospace and commercial aviation. As part of the rigorous new design process, the PV Powered engineering team identified potential system failure points and either designed them out or added redundancy to ensure maximum uptime.

Since cables and connectors are responsible for many inverter failures, the PVP75kW and PVP100kW avoid them by using bus bars for all power connections. To eliminate inverter failures due to overheated electronic components, PV Powered designed a robust, redundant thermal management system which greatly reduces the potential for damage caused by extreme environmental conditions in the field.

“We have made a concerted effort to design long-term reliability into our products,” said Dr. Steve Hummel, Vice President of Engineering at PV Powered. “Our design strategy is to minimize or eliminate long-term failure points. Whereas other inverter manufacturers are satisfied with HALT/HASS testing techniques to screen short term failures, these techniques don’t assure a 20-plus year operating life. Our methodology requires reliability data from every component supplier, coupled with extensive testing and modeling, to validate the long-term reliability of our products.”

In addition to increased reliability, PV Powered has designed the systems to be easier to install and maintain than other commercial inverters, saving time and money for installers both initially and over the life of the products. PV Powered says that they offer the lowest standard MPPT voltage and widest standard operating range of any three-phase inverter in the industry.

The company says this provides exceptional stringing capability with all PV modules on the market, including the new thin film modules. Load-rated AC and DC disconnects, cable landing points that accommodate the largest NEC-compliant cables, cable entry options on the top, side, and bottom, as well as generous cable bending space, are among the features that make the systems easy to install. The inverters’ modular design features easy-to-maintain subsystems, and built-in data monitoring enables commercial users and installers to observe the inverter’s power output remotely.

“It is evident that PV Powered has really listened to the needs of installers and owners with these new commercial inverters,” said Randall B. Corey, Vice President of Operations of Solar Integrated Technology. “Their focus on reliability and the overall ease of installation will address the primary product issues in the market and will win them bonus points from experienced commercial installers.”

"Listening to our installers is essential to our success," said Gregg Patterson, PV Powered CEO. “My commitment since joining PV Powered has been to redefine how the solar industry thinks about reliability and overall cost of ownership. By designing inverters that fully optimize the lifetime return of solar systems through dramatic uptime improvements, and by leading the industry in making systems easy to install and support, I believe PV Powered will be a fundamental catalyst for industry growth.”

Further details about: PV Powered