Top 5 products at RE+ 2024 selected by Ask Mayfield Anything panel
After traversing the RE+ tradeshow floor in Anaheim roughly a couple hundred times Sept. 10 and 11, I hopped on the SunCast stage on Sept. 12 as part of the 50th episode of Ask Mayfield Anything — a monthly webinar series hosted by, you guessed it, Mayfield Renewables.
I joined Ryan Mayfield, founder and SME at Mayfield Renewables, and Kate Collardson, a solar ops pro with a new fancy title that I can’t reveal yet, to select our Top 5 Products seen on the RE+ floor.
It was a fun opportunity to talk about solar products with two solar brains much bigger than mine. You should watch the full half hour chat above for our full thoughts on each product, but here are some spoilers below …
Honorable mention: American Solar Grazing Association
My first text to our group chat was “Check out this new technology,” with this photo:
A joke, but also, sheep are playing a big role in agrivoltaics, and green space development in general. Not everything novel needs to involve data or computing power. Sometimes, Mother Nature provides the most efficient / best solution, and allowing sheep to graze away in a solar field, to reduce the need for O&M lawn maintenance, is one of those great natural solutions.
5. SMA America Sunny Central Flex Inverter
“The Flex part of it is you can choose the operating voltage that you’re working within. 600 v, 100 or 1500 volt systems,” Mayfield reports, which is valuable for his engineering firm these days. “We’re seeing a lot of repowering systems, so that was an interesting one for me. One inverter than can serve multiple markets. You don’t have to rewire arrays, etc.”
Sunny Central FLEX allows flexible system design with its output of 6400 kVA, an MPPT voltage range from 880 Vdc up to 1325 Vdc, and up to 48 inputs. The Central FLEX is 26 tons and was not available to physically see at the event. Don’t confuse it for the smaller Sunny Highpower PEAK 3 Flex that was on display — a 1,500 Vdc inverter that interconnect at 480 Vac.
4. Unirac’s new (not yet for sale) critter guard
“It is important that we can use all of the products we install to the end of their lives, and critters can shorten lives,” Collardson said. “So, a critter guard for residential installs is very important but it can be a hassle to install and to make it work well. Unirac has a new system that you can clamp onto the module frame, and it is reusable. You can take it off and pop it back on as needed.” O&M teams will definitely approve of its ease of use. This product (unofficially called U-GUARD) is not yet available to order, according to the Unirac folks, but keep an eye out for it.
3. Helioscope’s Similar Obstruction Detection
I caught a demo of Helioscope’s new feature in action, and it is slick. This is the first real incorporation of Aurora Solar’s AI power within Helioscope. Here is an example.
Draw one keep out for this sky light. Click find similar obstruction, and within seconds the system identifies 182 other skylights. Think of the laborious solar design time saving!
2. SPAN panel updates
Mayfield highlighted SPAN’s power control system (PCS) capabilities, something we’ve been writing about a lot (I also hosted a panel on PCS with FranklinWH at RE+ based on this special report):
“They are able to work with folks on minimizing service upgrades or the need for service upgrades… You do your load calcs, and if the numbers come out relatively large in a residential application, using the SPAN product, you can load shed and you can actually manage those loads.”
But for any installers who have installed a SPAN panel previously and thought it was a bit difficult, Collardson reports that updates are coming in 2025. “They’ve made some improvements, listened to the feedback, so two new products — 48 and 16/24 — they are easier to install.”
1. Anza‘s solar module / BESS procurement platform
My top pick! I’ve written about Anza’s module procurement platform a lot, which now includes battery energy storage (BESS) as well. Anza is doing what Kayak did for travel, in terms of comparison shopping. You can set filters to shop for modules/BESS that specifically fit your project (hail rating, UFLPA risk, AD/CVD risk, price per watt, efficiency, and on and on) but the procurement platform also incorporates a ton of Borrego’s engineering know-how, to ensure buyers really get to pick the best product for their project.
The big news at RE+ is their new subscription model, which include access to real-time module market data (roughly 95% of the entire module market is available on the platform). Listen to CEO Mike Hall explain it during the Ask Mayfield Anything session (at this time stamp), or in this previous episode of The Pitch:
Comments are closed here.