Summer '21

SOLAR PV INTERVIEW
NAVIGATING THE
‘SOLAR COASTER’
The solar PV sector of today is drastically different to that of
ten years ago. Christelle Barnes (below), Country Manager
UK at SolarEdge, discusses riding the ‘solar coaster’ and
navigating the industry’s ever-changing landscape, but also
explains why things are looking positive moving forward.
The UK solar PV industry is no
stranger to turbulence. The
twists and turns of the wild ‘solar
coaster’ ride, set in motion following
the launch of the government’s Feed-in
Tariff scheme back in 2010, have
transformed the sector to something
very different to what it was ten years
ago.
“Previously, there were a lot of
companies that just did electrical
work, and then they’d start adding a
little bit of solar,” explained Christelle,
who is well placed to comment on
developments within the market. “Or
they just did roofing and started adding
a little bit of solar, and then they found
that it wasn’t sustainable for them to
continue. So now it’s more dedicated PV
companies.
“The PV industry of 2021 is very
different to the PV industry of 2010,
when it really took off in the UK. We
have a lot more solar installed now, so
there are more challenges on the grid.
We have a more sophisticated buyer, so
our installers need to be at the top of
their game.
“And we have a lot of different sectors
that are using solar. Now we have the
local authorities making decisions for
housing association portfolios. We have
the new-build market and housing
developers having to tick boxes, and
then we have private homeowners and
the whole commercial sector as well.
So, there’s a lot of different elements
to it…”
Founded in 2006 with a focus on
module-level power electronics, global
company SolarEdge set out to change
the way solar power is harvested and
managed in the PV system, and to
address “shortcomings” with the PV
technologies of the time.
The traditional string inverter lacked
what Christelle describes as “enhanced
digitalisation or cleverness”, and was
limited by a ‘domino effect’
which meant that the underperformance
of a single
solar panel would reduce
the efficiency of all the
other panels on the same
string.
Christelle explains: “With
the traditional inverter, the
whole system is connected
together on one string. This
basically means that if one panel is
shaded, the performance of all the
other panels on that string is impacted
– so if a bird lands on one module for
five minutes, the power from every
module in that string drops down to the
same level as the one with the bird on.
“There are no electronics up on the
roof so the inverter doesn’t know
that there’s something wrong with
one panel. It just sees a reduction of
performance coming from the whole
system.”
Looking to address these issues, the
SolarEdge system features a Power
Optimizer which allows each panel to
work individually at its maximum power
point, ensuring that
unlike traditional
systems, if one
‘domino’ falls, the rest
of the system continues
to operate at maximum
capacity. It also gathers all of the
information about system performance
at a panel level, which can then be
sent directly to the system owner or
maintenance team via SolarEdge’s
cloud-based monitoring platform.
The SolarEdge product was launched
in 2010 and “I think it’s fair to say that
the response was quite positive,” says
Christelle, “because we’re now the
biggest inverter manufacturer in the
world.”
In what Christelle describes as a “very
up and down kind of 12 months” for
most in construction, SolarEdge has
seen different sectors strengthening
40 GREENSCAPE SUMMER 2021 • www.greenscapemag.co.uk