ARDA Power and Alencon Partner to Deploy Next Generation of Microgrids with DC-coupled Solar + Storage

Figure 1: ARDA Power has chosen Alencon’s SPOT for inclusion in its unique, commercial and industrial scale DC microgrid solutions to enable the intuitive DC-coupling of Solar + Storage.

Hatboro, PA, United States and Oakville, ON, Canada

​Microgrid pioneer ARDA Power selects Alencon’s SPOT for inclusion in their unique solution which includes DC-coupled solar plus storage.

ARDA Power and Alencon Systems today announced a strategic partnership whereby ARDA will incorporate Alencon’s DC-DC Optimizer – the SPOT – into its unique, DC-coupled microgrid system which includes Solar + Storage.

ARDA has pioneered the market for microgrids, offering a unique DC-connected microgrid solution which brings the benefits of a microgrid - including resiliency and increased use of renewables - to commercial and industrial buildings without the requirement for complex custom engineering or costly interconnect applications.  In the ARDA system, the Alencon SPOT will serve to enable the DC-coupling of solar to the ARDA microgrid, will perform maximum power point tracking (MPPT) on the PV strings, and will curtail output based on commands from ARDA’s microgrid controls. The Alencon SPOT, which creates galvanic isolation between the PV and battery DC bus, will allow ARDA’s systems to be even easier to install and safer to operate. The Alencon SPOT is the only large scale, PV DC-DC optimizer on the market today that offers galvanic isolation between the PV array and a DC bus.

“The ability the Alencon SPOT offers ARDA to isolate a potentially troublesome PV string while the rest of the solar plus storage system continues to operate is a huge benefit. Galvanic isolation of solar from the rest of the system simplifies the fundamental protection approach on a system level. Since our system is battery centric, we always have a battery on the DC bus, meaning that the fault issues that arise from the PV, if not protected against, can be more severe when high battery currents are taken into account,” states Aleksey Toporkov, the President of ARDA Power. “Alencon’s SPOT protects against such eventualities, giving our users the assurance that their system will harness and store the most possible PV power while operating with both maximum up-time and highest degree of safety.”

​“It is a distinct privilege to have the opportunity to partner with ARDA, a true leader in the practical deployment of DC-coupled Solar + Storage based systems,” states Alencon Systems President Hanan Fishman. “ARDA’s unique solution truly stands to change the landscape for microgrids as we know them today and we here at Alencon are excited to be a part of this disruption.”

About ARDA Power

ARDA Power is working to change forever the way the world implements microgrid systems for non-residential buildings. For the first time ever you can simply and quickly configure a system using common controls and standard components. A battery-centric, DC-connected platform conceived by ARDA engineers with technology originally developed at the University of Toronto makes possible microgrids that are simple, low cost, resilient and versatile. Welcome to the age of the plug-and-play Microgrid!
For more information visit www.ardapower.com

​About Alencon

Alencon’s solutions for ALternative ENergy CONversion provide high modularity and scalability for systems from several megawatts to several-hundred megawatts. By helping to dramatically reduce balance of system costs, and increase power production through new inverter and energy harvesting technology, Alencon helps advance the state of the art and increase the financial viability of solar power.  Headquartered in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, has been building PV power conversion hardware since 2009, drawing on the combined decades of power electronics experience of its engineering team.
For more information visit www.alenconsystems.com