Microinverter With 25-Year Warranty From SolarBridge

Solarbridge working with Kyocera and SunPower on AC modules, integrating the PV module with electronics.

Eric Wesoff October 08, 2010

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

The microinverter and distributed solar electronics news is coming fast and furious in advance of next week's Solar Power International show in Los Angeles, California.

SolarBridge Technologies, a developer of power conversion solutions for the solar industry, announced the launch of the SolarBridge AC Module System, a microinverter that enables the industry’s first integrated AC modules with a full 25-year warranty. The company is partnering with photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturers to bring AC modules to market. Kyocera Solar (NYSE:KYO) and SunPower (NASDAQ:SPWRA and SPWRB) are two of these partners.

If you're going to build a microinverter integrated with a solar module, it makes sense that the microinverter should rival the lifetime of the panel itself.

As with all microinverters, the SolarBridge product improves energy harvest with the potential for improved reliability and reduced installation costs. The SolarBridge microinverter replaces today’s junction box and is integrated directly onto the back of a solar module during module manufacturing.

“For solar energy to become truly mainstream among residential and commercial sites, installation and operating costs must come down, and energy harvest must go up,” said Ron Van Dell, president and CEO, SolarBridge.

The SolarBridge microinverter requires a fraction of the bulk capacitance of traditional inverter architectures, enabling the use of long-life film capacitors. This is a component design decision different than that of the leading solar microinverter firm.

It's been a big week for this sector, with our coverage including a summary of activity in the market, $25M for SolarEdge, microinverter firm Azuray unstealthing, and National Semiconductor revealing their module partners.

Kyocera and SunPower will be showing working prototypes of the integrated AC module at their booths next week. See you in LA.