News

25 May 2010

 

CdTe PV module maker forms Abound Alliance with balance-of-system vendors

After entering full-scale commercial production last November, cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic (PV) module maker Abound Solar of Loveland, CO, USA (which was founded in January 2007 as AVA Solar but changed name in March 2009) has announced the Abound Alliance, which it describes as a unique ecosystem of balance-of-system partners that are collaborating with it to drive down the levelized cost of solar electricity.

The marketing partnership aims to allow each firm to better coordinate their product development, marketing and sales efforts, while optimizing products to improve performance, reduce costs, and/or increase system reliability.

The firm says that the Abound Alliance gives engineering, procurement and construction companies, utilities and project developers a straightforward path for vendor selection as they design large-scale systems, allowing customers to choose the appropriate best-in-class solution for their specific needs.

“Abound Solar understands the complexities facing solar project developers and engineering firms,” says senior VP of sales & marketing Julian Hawkins. “We have assembled the Abound Alliance to assist our mutual customers in simplifying the design, qualification, and procurement process,” he adds.

Alliance members include:

• KACO new energy Inc of San Francisco, CA, which has built designed and manufactured current inverters and power electronics for more than 60 years (with more than 2GW of PV inverters in operation worldwide).

• Northern States Metals of West Hartford, CT , the maker of Solar Flex Rack, which is reducing installation costs of commercial solar array projects in the USA and Canada with its patent-pending ground-mount and roof-mount systems.

• PV Powered of Bend, OR (founded in 2003 and acquired recently by Advanced Energy Industries), which provides grid-tied PV inverters in the residential, commercial and utility markets, and aims to tackle three issues affecting the growth of solar worldwide: (1) improving inverter reliability, (2) lowering the levelized cost of ownership for PV power generation, and (3) making distributed PV a scalable and controllable resource on the utility grid.

• Germany’s REFU Elektronik (which has a North American office is in San Jose, CA) specializes in custom power engineering applications and inverters since 1965. REFU Solar Electronics offers solar inverters from 4kW to 1.3MW with conversion efficiency of up to 98.2%.

• Schletter Inc of Tucson, AZ, which has more than 40 years experience of manufacturing custom-designed solar module mountings for roof- and ground-mounted systems (with ground-mounted systems up to 70% pre-assembled in the factory, to reduce cost and decrease installation time in the field).

• SunLink Corp of San Rafael, CA, which provides scalable solar module mountings for commercial rooftop and ground-mounted systems that have been used by integrators on more than 90MW of projects at 500 sites across North America (most recently for a 50MW supply agreement with Southern California Edison).

See related item:

Abound Solar partners with GP Joule to power 3.2MW of projects

Search: Abound Solar CdTe thin-film PV

Visit: www.abound.com