In September 2015, Sunfolding will begin installing and testing its Sunfolding T1 Horizontal Single Axis Tracker on the 86-acre PVUSA test field in Davis, CA, demonstrating its performance and reliability.
The PV power plant at PVUSA pioneered the use of virtual net metering as approved by the California State Legislature and represents the first community or "shared" solar PV plant in the U.S. It was originally commissioned in 2002 and currently serves as a commercial test bed for over 25 new technology company's innovative products and services.
"Despite significant advances in the manufacture of panels, inverters and BOS technologies, trackers have had little to no innovation in over a decade, and their reliance on metal and expensive sensors have made traditional trackers the weak link for solar power in a world of compressed profit margins," said Matt Cheney, CEO of Clean Energy Assets LLC. "As an innovative product offering, Sunfolding's tracker represents an important break through."
Initially targeting the commercial ground mount segment, the Sunfolding T1 Horizontal Single Axis Tracker cuts costs by rendering obsolete the most expensive and unreliable components of a single-axis tracker the complex electromechanical systems that enable their movement.
Designed to decrease integrator risks and financing, the Sunfolding T1 is a mass-manufactured, modular drive that improves performance for commercial and utility-scale photovoltaic systems. With 5 patents pending, Sunfolding ‘s T1 represents the first product offering the performance of a tracker with the installation ease of a fixed tilt.
"As the industry continues to benefit from the distributed generation trend, our goal is to meet that generation with distributed actuation that even further reduces operation costs and risk," said Leila Madrone, CEO of Sunfolding. "By driving down system complexity, we can maximize existing assets and increase total system value for EPCs and integrators."