Before, the industry was all about survival,” says Ensto Industrial Solutions President Fernando Trolia Slamic about the state of the solar business just five years ago. “It was a nascent industry concerned with technology and govern-ment regulations.” But that's all history. “Today,” says Trolia Slamic, “the fundamental eco-nomics of the solar business is comparable to those of tra-ditional power sources like gas and oil.” The solar boom What Trolia Slamic terms “the new boom” is taking place in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, with enor-mous potential for the United States, as well. “We see emerging markets doing in just three years what took about a decade to happen in Europe.” And so in today’s dynamic solar marketplace, the relevance of a company’s business model, as well as its creativity, becomes the crit-ical factor for success. One of the companies successfully riding this meg-atrend is ABB, a Switzerland-based power and automa-tion company with annual revenues of approximately 36 billion euros. And playing an important support role for ABB is Ensto. Honduras’ 609MW Honduras, Latin America's second largest producer of solar electricity, approved 23 solar farms in 2014 for a total of 609 megawatts. Key in this mix is a 146MW solar project near the city of Nacaome, the biggest solar project ever in Latin America, where ABB was awarded contract for electric balance of system for a 146 MWp project. According to Ensto Key Account Manager Tomi Ojanen, the Honduras farm’s clean energy will return the investors’ money in just four years. Overall, Ensto has supplied ABB with 1,144 Cubo E-based solar string monitoring junction boxes for the Honduras project, and in 2015 is supplying more than 2,000 to another 20 projects in 10 countries, including the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, India, the UK, and Finland. The string monitoring junction boxes, delivered by late December 2014, are a critical link in any solar instal-lation, and incorporated over 100 different components manufactured or sourced, requiring adapted and ded-icated manufacturing lines at Ensto factories working towards deadlines that demanded extreme flexibility and speed in engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing. The boxes are also nearly indestructible. “The boxes must endure UV radiation and be heavily corrosion-resistant,” says Ojanen. New ideas for a great partner Trolia Slamic says ABB has been a great partner who is very open to new ideas and creative solutions. “Conven-tional industry wisdom is that solar array junction boxes must be metallic. But when you consider the extreme operating conditions, such as UV radiation, humidity, heat, and day-night temperate fluctuations, you find out that it doesn’t have to be that way, and that other ‘unusual’ materials can achieve even better performance.” continued ENSTO TODAY 1/2016 41 "
EnstoToday 2016 No1 / ENG
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