Biel, Switzerland: Sputnik Engineering Provides Inverters for French PV System

Today the Swiss inverter manufacturer Sputnik Engineering AG, along with the installation company Nord Distribution Solaire (NDS), have inaugurated one of the largest private solar electricity systems in France.

The system has an output of 54 kilowatts and was built on a farm in Elincourt (around 200 kilometres north of Paris). NDS expects an annual yield of 48,000 kilowatt hours, which corresponds to a yearly energy consumption of about eleven four-person households.

In addition to the installation partners, manufacturers, journalists and the system operator, the regional Green party politicians Manuel Cau and Hervé Pignon from the French Environmental and Energy Organisation ADEME also took part in the event.

At the accompanying press conference, Sputnik press speaker Iris Krampitz emphasised the long-term experience of the Swiss inverter manufacturer. “Sputnik leads world-wide in the production of central inverters”, said Krampitz. “The company has been producing these devices in Switzerland for 17 years already. In this year, we want to produce the 7,000th central inverter”.

For the solar plant in Elincourt, a central inverter – a SolarMax 50 – was used, for which the company grants a guarantee of 20 years.

“We are pleased that we could acquire the company NDS as a sales partner”, said Krampitz. By the end of 2008, NDS boss François-Xavier Callens plans to have installed SolarMax inverters with a total output of 600 kilowatts.

“SolarMax has good references. The devices work reliably and effectively. In addition, the technical support and the good price convinced us”, explains Callens.

This year Sputnik will sell inverters with a total output of 12.8 megawatts to France. The company has been active on the French mainland and overseas territories for several years already. An inverter from SolarMax is operating in a record-setting one-megawatt plant on La Réunion.

Thanks to the French energy feed-in law, plant operator Luc Vermeulen receives 57 Eurocents from the energy provider EDF for every kilowatt hour that he produces with his photovoltaic system in Elincourt. He see his solar future – “thanks both to the high-quality products and installation” – very optimistically.

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: