Trina Solar has, since its entry into Australia in 2011, captured the majority of the solar capacity of the market. Recently, at the All-Energy virtual conference, Trina Solar showcased a new 670W Vertex-series panel to the Australian market which is expected to be listed by the Clean Energy Council as compliant with Australian standards. The company also announced a Sydney-based Training and Certification Centre for installers of TrinaTracker. With a solid foothold in the Australian market, the company’s products will further aid the growth and help dissolve the worries of solar developers in Australia.

Challenging Land Sites in Australia for Utility-Scale Solar Projects Pose a Problem:

In Australia, there has been a significant rise in challenging sites especially in terms of area available in the last few years. With heavy dependence on a battery, every utility farm either now or at some stage in the future is facing immense constraints.

Also, previously, there were huge and expansive four-corner patches of land that were completely flat and with soils that facilitated effective piling of the tracker foundations. But what is left now are sites with irregular boundaries and extremely variable terrain. These sites are rocky and are prone to flooding as well.

The proximity to the demand area is another concern. Sites these days are situated very far from large population centers, due to which the mobilization-of-labor cost increases tremendously, especially in a country like Australia with an already high labor cost market.

Trina Solar’s Large Format Modules Are Crucial to Address Site Challenges:

Trina Solar has always been at the forefront of bifacial technology on the modules. In fact, in the year 2020, Trina Solar was the first mover and introduced large-format modules. And Trina Solar hit the bull’s eye with the launch of the 670W module that utilizes an M12 210-millimeter wafer. As compared to the competitor modules, the cells used in the 670W modules are larger in size. This leads to fewer cells being needed and hence, the operating voltage is lower. Therefore, the highlight of these modules is that for the same amount of megawatts, there are fewer electrical strings for installers to crimp and connect, less DC trenching, and fewer combiner boxes on a balance of system level.

Trina Solar is the only module manufacturer to offer a truly integrative solution of the bifacial module and an intelligent single-axis tracker. Its one-stop-shop integrative solution greatly benefits the customers who build, own, and operate the asset and seek more bankability and lesser risk. Trina Solar understands the operational challenges and the engineering complexities of accommodating and deploying these large modules into the single-axis trackers. For example, it is one of the few technologies to have been deployed at scale in cyclonic and windy regions.

Trina Solar’s Bifacial Panel + Tracker Use on the Rise:

With the scaling up of bifacial technology, the use of Trina Solar’s bifacial panels with Trina trackers has seen a significant rise. There are a number of benefits that are derived from their usage like 

• A greater synergy or a value stacking effect by using a bifacial module on a tracker,
• Significantly higher energy as compared to what is achieved with a bifacial on a fixed structure because they’re higher off the ground,
• Wise placement leads to more sunlight entering in and around and on the underside of the modules which is how bifacial modules function and unlock more energy,
• Additional boost in energy because trackers, being a bit higher off the ground, enable a slightly more convective cooling effect of the wind on the panels,
• The use of trackers makes it easier to unlock the potential of co-locating solar and agriculture. For example, Trina Solar has deployed its tracking technology on a 30-megawatt poverty-alleviation project in China which has led to a greater uptake of solar in agriculture. 

All these factors add up significantly and lead to unlocking more than 5% extra energy, that too for a relatively modest increase in Capex!

Trina Solar Sets up One of a Kind Training and Certification Center for Trackers

Trina Solar, shortly after the acquisition of the Spanish tracker business, launched two types of trackers — the Vanguard 2P single-row tracker and Agile 1P dual-row tracker — into the market. Even with the onset of the Covid pandemic and restrictions around travel and large events, our products always gathered extremely high levels of curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm from people worldwide.

In order to expand and reach out to them, Trina Solar set up a one-of-a-kind training facility in Sydney. This training center facilitates installers and buyers to have a firsthand experience of the assembly process and have the products and components in their own hands. They can then see for themselves all the inherent benefits that they can derive from our specialized products.

Benefits:

• Use of 2P Vanguard tracker in conjunction with 670W bifacial modules requires a very low foundation count, in fact as low as 100 foundations per megawatt. For competitors, this number is 200 to 300 foundations per megawatt. This leads to enormous mitigation of costs of building on any kind of challenging site. 
• The tracker mechanism consists of patented spherical bearings that can articulate in three dimensions, giving the trackers a very good slope tolerance of up to 30% in any direction. 

Trina Solar is seeing a high demand on its specialized products. For instance, there are multiple projects using one-portrait Agile tracker totaling over 120 MW to be built in Australia next year. Trina Solar’s two-portrait Vanguard tracker is already specified as the technology of choice on over 300 MW of projects to be built in Australia and New Zealand in 2022.