by Shane Henson — November 7, 2011—eIQ Energy Inc. recently announced that Granite Construction Inc. (GVA) has commissioned a new 1.2-megawatt solar system at Granite’s aggregate and hot mix facility in Coalinga, California. The photovoltaic array, which includes eIQ Energy’s vBoost DC Parallel System, is believed to be the largest completed solar electric generating system to use distributed power electronics.
According to eIQ, Granite Construction selected eIQ Energy’s vBoost DC Parallel System to boost the output voltage of copper indium selenium (CIS) thin-film solar modules from Solar Frontier to the optimum level for the array’s central inverters, supplied by Siemens, which feed solar energy into the power grid. The installation is expected to offset up to 50 percent of the Granite facility’s total energy requirements.
eIQ Energy’s Parallel Solar technology allowed Granite Construction to achieve significant labor and material savings by eliminating much of the wiring, combiner boxes, and installation costs required by traditional series-wiring architectures. Those savings are expected to more than pay for eIQ Energy’s part of the solar system.
Other facilities interested in building their renewable energy capacity through using distributed electronics to connect solar modules in parallel may also benefit from turning to eIQ.
