Huawei, the Chinese multinational telecommunications company, is also a rising global force in the global solar industry. As a manufacturer of smart string inverters and FusionSolar Smart PV solutions, the company has recorded a rapid rise up the inverter supplier rankings, coming out top in terms of megawatts shipped in GTM Research’s list of the top-10 inverter manufacturers of 2015.
As with all companies in the dynamic global solar industry, Huawei is constantly seeking out new markets, and is setting its sights on the opportunities emerging in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“We note that over the past two years, the PV industry in Sub-Saharan Africa has got into full swing,” says Yidong He, general manager of global solutions, at Huawei. “Solar energy is gradually becoming a major generation source, and we’re happy to see that.”
According to He, one of the key drivers for the company’s interest in renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa is the crucial need to protect the region’s fragile environment. “The Sub-Saharan Africa ecosystem is one of the best-protected areas of the world,” says He. “It is therefore right that renewable energy, particularly solar, is used as the main power source as it can ensure that economic development and ecosystem protection coexist, and that the old path to development followed in Asia and elsewhere, of first pollution and then governance, is not duplicated.”
Smart solutions
Huawei attributes its leading position in the inverter market to its commitment to and heavy investment in research and development. Overall the company has 176,000 employees worldwide, and 79,000 of these are R&D engineers.
In 2015, Huawei's R&D investment was CNY59.6 billion (US$9.0 billion), which accounts for 15.1% of its annual revenue. In 2015, sales revenue was CNY395 billion, an increase of 37% from a year earlier.
Huawei says it 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 recognised as a leader in technical innovation in the industry. The aim of innovation is to bring benefits to customers and provide cutting edge, high quality, and cost-efficient products and solutions to customers, the company maintains.
The result of this extensive investment is that the company is able to boast some impressive credentials.
“They offer high efficiency up to 99%, while multi-MPP trackers realise real-time and accurate string detection,” explains He. “The detection accuracy can reach 0.5%, six times higher than traditional centralised inverters. Multi- MPPT can also effectively reduce the influence caused by shadowing and string mismatch, dramatically improving the yields. A fully closed design ensures high-level protection based on our mature and advanced technology from communication.”
“IP65 protection makes our inverter versatile for all the hostile outdoor environmental conditions, such as high temperature, high levels of dampness, high altitude, extreme cold, sand, salt and mist. We use our own chipset Hisilicon and operating system to reduce the weight and heat dispersion. They contain no quick-wearing parts such as fuses or external fans, which makes them maintenance free. Furthermore, our inverters are open, supporting inputs of different types of equipment and parts like trackers and sensors.”
There has been much debate in recent years about central versus string inverters and the relative merits of each type of inverter architecture. For Huawei there is no doubt which is the better system.
“String is better,” says He. “String inverter design is not simply ideal for rooftops, which has been highly recognised by the public. Meanwhile, we have made comparisons between the two solutions from different perspectives; these show the better performance of string inverters as regards safety, yields, system cost, installation, operation and maintenance, monitoring, environmental adaptability and grid connection.
“It is tested and proved not simply in theory but also in the practical application from the customers’ projects, which offer yields 3% higher than other solutions. Our string inverters and solution have been widely applied for single projects over 100MW both in and outside China.”
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