A 20 MW field installation in Tarlac City, Philippines

The metropolitan area surrounding the city of Manila has over 13 million inhabitants. The public grid is constantly affected by failures, leaving residents unable to rely on a stable energy supply. For this reason, more and more photovoltaic systems have cropped up over the past few years, which help to stabilise the grid and improve the population’s power supply.   

In April 2019, a large 20 MWp system with Fronius Eco inverters was brought on line. A total of 612 inverters and 61,200 solar modules had been installed in just five months.    

An installation that soon pays for itself with the Fronius System Partner programme

“The project was challenging due to the tight completion deadline imposed by the client as well as the technical and regulatory testing that the nominated inverter technology will have to undergo to be certified as compliant to the grid code requirements of the Philippines. Fronius, despite being a string inverter and not conventionally used for large scale utility PV application, was able to not only successfully pass these tests, but also manufacture, deliver, provide installation and commissioning support within the timeframe required. We were bound to finish the project contractually in 6 months. Fronius was a no-brainer to achieve this target." reports project manager Cris Vincent Alidon from Solenergy Systems.

"We love how Fronius has, not only customer service, but also customer empowerment in mind. Their System Partner program allows us to provide proactive after-sales service to the client in-country. This reduces the service time by as much as 99.9% - from months to hours."

Higher yields in event of shade, difficult terrain and soiling

Using string inverters in this size of installation is quite unusual. The fact that Solenergy Systems opted for the Fronius Eco devices brings huge benefits in terms of yield: “Due to the number of inverters, the system works more efficient than it would do with central inverters. This is as the Ecos are better able to deal with conditions such as partial shade, uneven ground and solar module soiling. This 20 MWp Fronius plant has a 50 MWp sister plant using central inverters located beside it. The Fronius plant synchronizes earlier and de-synchronizes later than the central inverter plant - by a full hour! That's more kWh for the client and a greater confidence for us in meeting our guaranteed annual outputs." explains Alidon.    

Each year the system will produce 32,000 MWh of clean electricity, which corresponds to a CO₂ reduction of 18.6 million kg.

With this great 20 MW installation Solenergy Systems won the Fronius reference promotion „Fronius in Action - all eyes on your work“ in Asia. Further information can be found here.