Omron, worldwide leader in industrial automation, confirms its strong commitment in photovoltaic business, and remains, according to IHS Research, a Top Five global supplier in inverter industry.
The Japanese company consolidates the leading position in its home market, where residential sector is booming for solar business, and confirms its presence in international market, with main focus in Italy, in Spain and in emerging solar markets , such as Ukraine, Turkey, Lebanon and South Africa.
Omrons strong experience in the solar Japanese market is the base for the expansion in Europe and in new emerging markets. One of the main strength of the company, innovation technology, is a key issue for Japanese residential market, where government security requests for grid connection are very strictly.
A good example at this regard is AICOT, Omrons technology to prevent Islanding, the condition in which a Solar power generation systems continue to generate electricity even when electric power supplied by the grid is interrupted. In that cases rapid detection of power outages is mandatory, to shut down the Inverter, thus preventing damage on the grid and ensuring safety of the workers repairing power lines who doesnt expect that some lines are still powered.
Main innovation introduced by AICOT (Anti Islanding Control Technology), which has been adopted as Japans official standard, needed for JET certificate, mandatory for grid connection in Japan, is that power outage is detected via frequency changes rather than via voltage changes. The completed AICOT system can detect an islanding condition in less than 0.2 s and shut down the inverter in less than five seconds, as requested by grid code.
Solar industry need top performances, thats why Omrons experience designing sensing technology for different sectors, industrial automation on top, is needed, and AICOT is a testimonial about that.
To develop AICOT controller and to run preliminary tests OMRON engineers used a simulation environment, reducing time spent in final integration and test in real environment, where islanding conditions are either difficult or unsafe to replicate.
Thanks to AICOT, Omron inverter KP100L is compliant with international standard IEC 62116, which defines test procedures of islanding prevention measures and is a requirement for Certificate NRS-097-2-1, needed in South Africa, which we obtained quite smoothly, says Eleonora Denna Product Marketing Manager for Environment Solution Business in Omron, Photovoltaic market is in a consolidation trend, thats why leveraging on cutting edge technology and grid security requirements is the winning strategy.
