Director of R&D Joshua Kaufman recently presented on Pika Energy’s innovative wind-solar hybrid inverter technology to an industry audience of several hundred at the 2013 Small Wind Conference. Pika’s X3001 inverter enables home wind turbines and solar arrays to be integrated into a lower cost system that generates more electricity more of the time. The components connect to each other via REbus DC Microgrid, a highly efficient 380VDC network with embedded communication.
The Small Wind Conference is an annual gathering of manufacturers, installers, dealers, and distributors in the small wind industry. Taking place in Steven’s Point, Wisconsin, the conference features numerous presentations highlighting innovations in small wind, defined as wind turbines with capacity of 100 kW and under. Other talks at the 2013 conference included introduction of a new lightweight wind turbine tower and a new leasing program that reduces the upfront cost of installation. All presentations from the conference will be publicly available later this summer at: http://smallwindconference.
Joshua’s presentation focused on the shortcomings of existing AC infrastructure to serve the diverse distributed generation needs of the future. The majority of renewable energy systems installed today focus on a single technology, most commonly solar arrays and wind turbines. To create hybrid systems requires customized inverters that separately tie each power source to grid, resulting in added cost and inefficiencies. This is why grid-tied residential scale hybrid systems are uncommon. Pika Energy’s REbus DC Microgrid technology addresses this need by enabling different renewable energy sources and loads, including electric vehicle chargers, to be connected to the same inverter.