Satcon Technology Corporation’s PowerGate Plus 500 kW solar PV inverters have been selected and are now fully operational at First Light, Canada’s solar farm developed through a joint venture between SunEdison and SkyPower.

 

The 9.1 megawatt First Light installation is located on approximately 90 acres of land in Stone Mills, Ontario, and is projected to generate more than 10 million kilowatt hours (kWhs), enough electricity to power nearly 1,000 homes in its first year of operation.

 

“The First Light Solar Park is the largest system deployed under Ontario’s RESOP and is a significant step in the growth of utility scale solar power generation in North America,” said Carlos Domenech, CEO of SunEdison (News - Alert), in a statement.

 

Domenech said that producing reliable large scale solar power in the Ontario climate presented design challenges to the project team.

 

“Satcon brought the expertise and the proven inverter technologies to help us achieve the performance and quality required to deliver stable and reliable solar power,” he added.

 

Satcon as part of the pact supplied 18 of its PowerGate Plus 500 kW inverters, the large scale solar PV power conversion technology solution, with over 170 megawatts delivered worldwide since 2005.

 

“First Light further demonstrates the growing adoption of large scale solar installations in North America and the increased demand for advanced feature, utility grade solutions,” said Steve Rhoades, president and chief executive officer of Satcon.

 

Rhoades said that the company has worked closely with both SunEdison and SkyPower to develop a total system solution that delivers the highest levels of performance and reliability designed for the challenging Canadian environment.

 

“With First Light, we continue to set the standard for large scale solar power production in North America,” he said.

 

Satcon Technology Corporation is a provider of utility scale distributed power solutions for the renewable energy market.

 

Back in May Satcon had announced that their PowerGate Plus Spectrum (News - Alert) micro grid solution has been selected to power La Ola Hawaii’s largest solar photovoltaic farm and Micro-Grid on the island of Lana’i.

 

The 1.2 megawatt installation sits on a 10 acre site in south Lana’i on the Palawai Basin and is the first solar photovoltaic power plant to be controlled remotely by a utility, Maui Electric Company, Ltd.