Goodwe plans to increase inverter capacity to 15 GW

In a chat with pv magazine, the managing director of GoodWe’s European unit, Thomas Haering, described the inverter manufacturer’s plans to expand capacity this year, after construction started on new factories in Suzhou and Guangde.

June 21, 2019 Emiliano Bellini

Thomas Hearing, MD of Goodwe Europe.

Image: GoodWe

Chinese inverter maker Goodwe is building new manufacturing facilities in the city of Suzhou, in the southeastern Jiangsu province of Eastern China, and in Guangde, in the southeast of Anhui.

“With full operation of these two facilities we are aiming to increase our production capacity to 15 GW in 2019,” Thomas Haering, managing director of the manufacturer’s European unit told pv magazine.

The factory in Suzhou will become Goodwe’s headquarters, Haering said. “These two factories occupy a total area of 15 hectares in total and will be equipped with 12 modern production lines and more than 1,000 employees,” he said. The Guangde fab will be in one of the most important transportation hubs in the Yangtze River delta, with good logistics infrastructure.

Combining inverters with storage

Haering added, the company is focusing on the development of a battery storage system that combines inverter, batteries and software into one system. The new device, dubbed the SH Smart Hybrid System, has a modular set-up with expandable battery storage according to the user’s demand. “For this inverter, we’ve developed software that intelligently manages the energy to maximize savings daily; we have built in the ability to switch on high energy consuming appliances during the day, reducing the amount of energy sent to the grid,” Haering said.

The European MD said the BT series – a GoodWe retrofit, AC-coupled solution able to upgrade three-phase PV systems to enable storage capabilities from 5-10 kW – is being made compatible with high voltage li-ion batteries ranging from 180-600 V, and is also equipped with an uninterruptible power supply function. “It can reach high efficiencies of up to 98% and one very outstanding feature is that it permits up to 100% of overloading,” he added. The EH series can also be combined with high voltage batteries, from 85-450 V, with overloading capacity able to reach up to 20%. “One of its most remarkable features is that even when it is on back-up mode it can still supply power to large loads such as air conditioners,” Haering said.

Plenty of choice

The company provides inverters in another four series. The DNS range targets residential on-grid markets by offering a compact, single-phase model with dual MPPT ranged from 3-6 kW. The MT series, widely applied in the commercial and industrial sector, has a maximum DC input oversizing ratio which reaches 30% and an highest AC output of up to 15%.

The XS products are 5.2kg ultra-small inverters with capacity ranging from 0.7-3 kW and are said to offer 30% of DC input oversizing and to be able to achieve a maximum European efficiency of 97%. And the ET series, according to the company, is widely used in the storage segment and consists of a three-phase, high voltage hybrid inverter with maximum efficiency of up to 98.3%. “It allows up to 100% overloading and features uninterruptible power supply within 10 milliseconds to protect your home appliance in the event of a blackout,” said Haering presenting the latter.

As for the MT series, the company has also highlighted how it will be extended to 80 kW for bifacial modules and large scale ground mounted PV plants.

Goodwe is active on four continents with branches in Australia, India, Korea, the Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Brazil and the U.K. “More than 60 foreign staff with technical backgrounds are on standby to support you with instant and professional service beyond time and area limitations,” Haering added.

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