2009-10-16 - Two teams participating in Solar Decathlon 2009, Team Germany and Team Spain, are being sponsored respectively by ABB in Germany and Spain, demonstrating ABB innovation in both renewable power generation and the building systems business.
By ABB Communications
ABB is the leading partner for solar power generation and can deliver the know-how, products and systems for large, efficient power plants as well as small, efficient buildings.
In Solar Decathlon 2009, the competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy to create the most energy efficient house, ABB Germany has provided expertise and specific ABB intelligent building components for students of the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Likewise, ABB Spain has been working since the beginning with Team Spain, made up of students and teachers from the Polytechnical University of Madrid. In order to make their Black & White House project more efficient, a large solar panel installed on the roof, powered by ABB electrical systems and moved by ABB motors and drives, uses a tracking system to follow the movement of the sun.
The roof of the B&W house tracks the position of the sun, part of the house's automation system. This maximizes its energy production - moving the PV roof adds 10.3 percent more power, compared to a fixed roof oriented south, according to the designers. The PV roof contains high efficiency modules of 220 watts peak each. The design of the movable roof is based on the dimension of the PV modules.
In 2010, the first European Solar Decathlon will take place in Madrid, organized by the Polytechnical University of Madrid, and ABB Spain will also be present as a key partner.
ABB fosters close relationships with key innovators in the solar sector, such as universities, in order to share knowledge and expertise.
But ABB also funds in-house research to find new ways to make the sun work harder for us by investigating new solutions to track the sun’s path (
recently tested at the Totana photovoltaic plant in Spain) and new ways to manage and control installations using systems such as SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) or Power Generation
TM software.
This quest for innovation in the solar sector made
ABB one of the founding partners of the Desertec initiative, and the originator of the concept of harvesting large amounts of electrical power from the world's deserts.
ABB solutions to increase wise energy use in buildings - such as intelligent building controls and motors made more efficient through ABB drives - are pushing the boundaries of energy efficiency in buildings, making ABB the partner of choice in this sector as well.
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ABB has just launched its first inverter developed solely for the solar market. Solar inverters convert the direct current that is produced by the sun in photovoltaic plates into alternating current that can be fed into the electrical grid. ABB's solar inverter will be available in ranges from 100 kW to up to 500 kW, and are optimized for cost-efficient, multi-megawatt solar power plants. Designed for maximum reliability so that PV solar systems can achieve maximum uptime, ABB's PVS800 solar inverter is modular, very compact and fully integrated into ABB's global service network.
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