TechTalk

Solyndra Reshapes Solar

California PV manufacturer delivers breakthrough systems for commercial rooftops and strengthens European presence

I talked with Clemens G. Jargon, Solyndra’s Vice President EMEA and Managing Director of Solyndra GmbH in Munich, Germany; he is responsible for overseeing the company's rapidly growing European operations. Solyndra designs and manufactures photovoltaic systems, comprised of panels and mounting hardware, for the commercial rooftop market employing high volume manufacturing to meet the needs of the global solar market.

A splendidly elegant solution using proprietary cylindrical modules (as opposed to the conventional flat modules) and thin-film technology, Solyndra’s PV system is designed to generate significantly more solar electricity on an annual basis from typical low-slope commercial rooftops with lower installation costs than conventional PV flat panel technologies.

Simple installation, low maintenance and high efficiency provide a cost-compelling PV solution

Commercial rooftops represent a vast, under-utilized resource and huge opportunity for generating solar electricity. Since its founding in 2005, the company has been developing technology and ramping manufacturing capacity to produce its proprietary CIGS-based thin film PV system. Solyndra is currently shipping its systems, comprised of panels and mounting hardware, to fulfill more than $1.5 billion of multi-year contracts with customers in the United States and now, Europe. Headquartered in Fremont, California, Solyndra operates a state-of-the-art 300,000 square foot fully-automated manufacturing complex.

Designed specifically for commercial rooftop installation, Solyndra’s thin film PV system features proprietary cylindrical modules which collect more available sunlight and generate significantly more solar electricity from low-slope commercial rooftops than conventional flat panel PV technologies. Further, Solyndra’s lightweight PV system is uniquely fast and economical to install due to simple horizontal mounting hardware and unique air-flow properties of the solar panels.

Solyndra innovative cylindrical elements have an extremely low wind resistance requiring only lightweight fixings

Conventional panels require heavily secured mounts to survive the force of wind pressure

These innovative cylindrical elements that make up the array have an extremely low wind resistance, are easily installed by non-tech maintenance staff and do not suffer the efficiency-crippling drawbacks of more conventional panels of soiling due to weather, leaves, bird droppings or other debris – it all just washes away naturally.

Solyndra recently announced the opening of the company’s European headquarters in response to the high demand in Europe for their unique photovoltaic (PV) systems which provide breakthrough solar electricity performance for commercial rooftops.

The commercial rooftops of Europe provide an immense opportunity for the generation of solar electricity and are of growing importance with the help of favorable incentive support in many countries. This move strengthens the company’s ability to serve its customers in the region and allows it to play a greater role in the evolution of the European energy market towards a more sustainable future.

Solyndra’s panels have already been fully certified for European solar installations and have independently-validated performance from multiple sources. The panels have received International Electro Technical Commission (IEC) and product certifications as well as GSE qualification for the Italian feed-in tariff system. Independent validation of the Solyndra PV system’s energy yield performance has been done by leading institute Fraunhofer ISE of Freiburg, Germany and compared to field data from multiple international installations. Solar project developers and investors can now rely on Fraunhofer ISE for accurate, independently-validated system energy yield performance forecasts for Solyndra systems.

Solyndra has more than $1.5 Billion in orders and is entering its second year of international commercial shipments to customers in Europe and the United States. The company is already active in Europe with international solar power project integrators such as Phoenix Solar and Gecko Logic of Germany and leading international roofing systems manufacturer Carlisle Energy Services.

An interesting video on the manufacturing and installation can be viewed here:
http://www.solyndra.com/Products/Videos

www.solyndra.com

Dialog Raises Level of Configurability and Integration

New class of power management IC optimizing efficiency of portable consumer devices

I talked with Mark Jacob, Dialog’s Director of Marketing for audio and power management who told me about the company’s success in designing platform Power Management ICs for the high volume consumer market. These innovative products provide their customers with the same flexibility as standard products, but with the huge benefits of higher integration and performance found normally only in ASSPs. In today’s financial and ecological environment especially, this gives the designer an extremely compelling route.

Dialog Semiconductor has made its mark in the industry by creating the world’s most energy-efficient, highly integrated, mixed-signal integrated circuits optimized for personal mobile and automotive applications. The company provides flexible and dynamic support, world-class innovation, and the assurance of dealing with an established business partner. Customers with a significant contribution to revenue include Sony-Ericsson, Apple, Bosch and Tridonic.

Headquartered near Stuttgart, Germany with operations in the USA, UK, Austria, China, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the company has 250 employees worldwide.

Dialog’s DA9052, advanced system PMIC

Dialog introduced the DA9052, an advanced system power management integrated circuit (PMIC) that offers designers greater flexibility in reducing power consumption, size and cost in mobile phones and other portable multimedia devices. Conceived as a platform-PMIC, capable of supporting all major families of application and mobile graphics processors, DA9052 offers an unprecedented level of user-configurability.

DA9052 block diagram

Up to 14 power supplies, 16 GPIOs and other system function behaviour may be adapted in different operating modes as a means of eliminating power consumption overhead in the host processor. This high level of system wakeup/mode control within the PMIC reduces design cycle time and complexity by enabling software and application development to start at an earlier phase using a pre-validated PMIC platform.

The DA9052 is easily set up through a simple graphical user interface in Dialog’s Power Commander software utility. This configures power sequencing and multiple sleep modes. The device integrates 4 DC/DC buck converters and 10 programmable LDOs on-chip, and the LDOs can be connected to the DC/DC converters to improve system efficiency. Each output can be connected in series or parallel, adding further flexibility. To further optimise the processor energy-per-task, dynamic voltage scaling can be used on up to 5 outputs and Dialog’s SmartMirror1 dynamic biasing is implemented on all linear regulators.

Power dissipation within DA9052 itself is autonomously regulated on-chip. A dual-input switching DC/USB battery charger allows up to 1.2A to be drawn from a lithium battery with minimal thermal impact to the DA9052 device itself. This allows the increased output current to be sustained for maximum processor performance.

USB power inputs are over-voltage protected and the embedded power path controller manages energy flow between an AC adapter, USB cable and battery, whilst maintaining USB power specification compliance via the D+/D- data lines. This power path functionality is supported without any processor interaction, enabling power scenarios such as instant power-up with a fully discharged battery.
Mark told me, “Conventional discrete and fixed function PMICs lack the necessary control and flexibility demanded by end customers when embedded within a processor platform reference design, a new class of highly configurable platform PMIC is emerging which introduces a layer of user-software programmability. This enables our customers to tune the hardware at design-time to complement their own customisation activity without incurring the risk or time to market penalty”