The company’s achievement is largely due to a balanced growth in diverse locations, including Japan, India, Thailand, and the Philippines for the Asia-Pacific area; the USA, Mexico, and South America for the Americas; as well as the UK, France, and Central Asia for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region.
The 2014 figures include partial shipments to the largest PV site built in the EMEA region, the 300 MW project, located in Cestas, France, where Schneider Electric was the chosen provider for the complete electrical balance of systems, including a 220kV grid-tie substation fitted with an advanced power plant controller driving 400 inverters in the field. Schneider Electric will also provide services for the complete solution, with guarantees on equipment availability for 20 years.
Several key factors contributed to achieving this strong market performance. Schneider Electric proposes a global and fully industrialized solution offering, based on the ConextTM Core XC and XC-NA inverter platform – which includes packaged medium voltage power conversion substations (PV Box), advanced monitoring & control systems (Conext Control and Conext Advisor), low voltage DC equipment, and medium to high voltage grid-tie substation. This complete offering is suitable for shipment and installation in all types of mild to harsh environments and in compliance with varied local and regional standards.
Schneider Electric also supports its customers with global and local engineering, supply chain, and service capabilities that are paramount to support the geographic expansion of the PV market. In addition, the Conext Core XC and XC-NA platform offer a proven track record of reliability, with more than 2 GW of PV inverters operating to date, since the launch of the product in 2012. This becomes more and more important as the PV industry matures and the share of project developers increases, who own and operate their PV assets under an IPP or a “yieldco” model.
Lastly, the number of solar key accounts trusting Schneider Electric for their business worldwide represents an ever increasing portion of the company’s activity.