Integrated electronics housing for a solar array
원문보기
IPC분류정보
국가/구분
United States(US) Patent
등록
국제특허분류(IPC7판)
G01J-001/44
G01S-019/14
F24J-002/54
H01L-031/042
H01L-031/02
F24J-002/38
G01S-003/786
출원번호
US-0227652
(2011-09-08)
등록번호
US-8916811
(2014-12-23)
발명자
/ 주소
Miller, Wayne
Kazemi, Hossein
Hinman, Brian
출원인 / 주소
Western Gas and Electric Company
대리인 / 주소
Rutan & Tucker, LLP
인용정보
피인용 횟수 :
0인용 특허 :
4
초록▼
An integrated electronics housing contains both system electronics and power generation circuits for a two-axis tracker assembly having a CPV solar array. The housing contains at least a communication bus, motion control circuits, and inverter circuits, and acts as the local system control point for
An integrated electronics housing contains both system electronics and power generation circuits for a two-axis tracker assembly having a CPV solar array. The housing contains at least a communication bus, motion control circuits, and inverter circuits, and acts as the local system control point for that tracker mechanism. The inverter circuits generate three-phase AC voltage that is supplied to a grid interface transformer. Each inverter receives a bipolar DC voltage supplied from its own set of CPV cells. The motion control circuits move the CPV cells of the tracker mechanism to angular coordinates resulting from a solar tracking algorithm. The communication bus connects to the motion control circuits and the inverter circuits to facilitate communications of information, including parameters of power being generated by the inverter circuits, between the motion control circuits and the AC inverter circuits to fine tune the AC power generated out of the tracker mechanism.
대표청구항▼
1. An integrated electronics housing containing both system electronics and power generation circuits for a two-axis tracker assembly having a Concentrated PhotoVoltaic (CPV) solar array; comprising: one or more Alternating Current (AC) inverter circuits with switching devices that generate three-ph
1. An integrated electronics housing containing both system electronics and power generation circuits for a two-axis tracker assembly having a Concentrated PhotoVoltaic (CPV) solar array; comprising: one or more Alternating Current (AC) inverter circuits with switching devices that generate three-phase AC voltage supplied to a utility power grid interface transformer, where each inverter receives a bipolar DC voltage supplied from its own set of CPV cells;one or more motion control circuits configured to move the CPV cells of the two-axis solar tracker mechanism to angular coordinates resulting from a solar tracking algorithm; anda backplane communication bus connecting to the motion control circuits and the inverter circuits to facilitate communications of information including parameters of power being generated by the inverter circuits between the motion control circuits and the AC inverter circuits to fine tune an AC power generated out of the two axis tracker mechanism, and where the integrated electronics housing contains at least the communication bus, the motion control circuits, and the inverter circuits, and acts as the local system control point for the two-axis solar tracker mechanism. 2. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: a wireless transmission/receiver circuit to transmit and receive communication from a router that is communicatively connected to a central backend management system over an Internet, where the wireless transmission/receiver circuit is contained within the integrated housing and connects to the motion control circuits, and the inverter circuits via the communication bus, which allows faster communications and higher bandwidth internal communication from and between the discreet circuits contained within the integrated housing than if those communications occurred via a wireless network or a network of external switchboards exchanging information over cables between the different circuits in their own housings. 3. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: a global positioning system (GPS) circuitry configured to provide geographical position information of the CPV solar array of the two axis tracker mechanism, wherein the housing also includes the GPS circuitry and wireless communication circuitry, wherein at least the motion control, the inverter power generation and the GPS circuits associated with the housing are configured to communicate information about the CPV solar array and the two-axis tracker mechanism to a central backend management system over an Internet via a wireless router for the local area network located at the solar site, where the GPS on the two axis tracker mechanism eliminates any estimating of a particular tracker's location relative to the Sun in the sky or estimating where a particular tracker is positionally located in the row and columns of two axis tracker mechanism in the solar generation site, which allows a more accurate pointing of the solar array, with respect to the Sun. 4. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where each inverter circuit has multiple strings of CPV cells feeding that inverter circuit, and the strings connect to the inverter circuit, which allows the multiple strings of CPV cells to each supply less than a nominal 600 VDC and use less costly conduit and cables to carry the maximum 600 VDC input voltage from that string to the housing enclosure, and merely the housing enclosure of the integrated electronic housing is required to accommodate voltages of up to 1200 VDC. 5. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where the integrated electronics housing also includes a ground fault circuit for the set of CPV cells which signal a presence of a fault condition to the inverter circuit, a wireless communication circuit to send parameters gathered from other circuits in the housing to a central TCP/IP Router, a shared power supply circuit for the other circuits within the integrated housing, a central processor unit connected to the communication bus and provides shared processing power to at least the motion control circuits and the inverter circuits, where all of these circuits are contained within or located on the housing in this local system control point for operating the two axis tracker mechanism. 6. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: where the motion control circuitry that controls the movement of the CPV cells on the two-axis tracker assembly, the motion control circuitry includes a single slew drive for roll rotation and multiple linear actuators for tilt rotation for all of the CPV cells on the two-axis tracker assembly;where each inverter circuit within the housing receives DC power from its own set of CPV cells, which are located all on the same side of the two-axis tracker assembly and converts that DC power from the CPV cells to three phase 480 VAC power;a Global Position System unit mounted in or on the housing that continuously feeds the time, date and latitude and longitude to the solar tracking algorithm resident within the integrated electronics housing for an Ephemeris calculation;software coding and logic circuitry are built-in for CPV string level performance monitoring on each array to allow 1) real-time performance feedback, 2) remote monitoring of the two axis tracker assembly, and 3) local measurements and generation of a current-voltage (IV) curve;where the solar tracking algorithm is a hybrid open and closed loop tracking algorithm configured to supply coordinates to the motion control circuit to adjust/fine tune the angle of the CPV cells to a maximum power output;a central processor circuitry configured to perform the Ephemeris calculation for use by the motion control circuits to position the CPV cells relative to a current angle of the Sun; andlogic to compute and generate alarms in near real time, calculating performance modeling, and other general processing include network communications to transmit to the central backend management system over the Internet. 7. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: where the housing has two or more chambers including a NEMA-4 chamber that seals the electronic circuitry inside the chamber from an environment exterior to the housing, and a NEMA-3 chamber where the components and electronic circuitry contained within are exposed to the outside environment to facilitate cooling and heat dissipation requirements. 8. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where at least two or more AC inverter circuits are contained with the integrated electronics housing, and where a primary-side common node of the Utility Power grid interface transformer is connected to Earth ground, where each inverter circuit has its own set of isolation contacts to connect as well as isolate this particular inverter from the Utility Power Grid interface transformer, and where each inverter circuit is built modularly with electrical connections to slide into place within the integrated housing and slide out from the integrated housing as an entire unit, which allows easier serviceability in the field, as well as easier assembly of the integrated electronics housing at the manufacturing facility. 9. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: ground fault circuitry in each inverter circuit configured to detect a ground fault with any the CPV cells from the solar array feeding that inverter circuit, where the ground fault circuitry is contained within the housing and connects to the communication bus to send notice of a fault to both 1) the inverter circuit to activate its isolation contacts and 2) to a wireless circuit for reporting to the central management server, andwhere at least the motion control circuits, inverter circuits, and ground fault circuitry contain distributed performance monitoring circuitry, which provides remote reporting of measurements and notification of alarms in near real time to the central management server. 10. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: at least two or more AC inverter circuits contained with the integrated electronics housing;a first three-phase AC inverter circuit of the two or more inverter circuits;a second three-phase AC power generation unit of the two or more inverter circuits, where a first string of CPV cells all from the East side of the solar array feeds the first inverter circuit, and a second string of CPV cells all from the West side of the solar array feeds the second inverter circuit, and this grouping of similarly shaded modules into the same string of CPV cells feeding a particular inverter circuit tends to allow a more narrow input working voltage into that three-phase AC inverter circuit, which avoids a DC-to-DC boost stage requirement between the input DC voltage circuit portion and the AC conversion portion in that three-phase AC inverter circuit, andwhere the integrated electronics housing is mounted on the two-axis tracker assembly. 11. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where the motion control circuit controls 1) a drive mechanism for each tilt axle and two or more tilt axles are part of the two axis tracker assembly, and 2) a common roll axle slew drive that moves all of the sets of CPV cells on the two-axis tracker assembly in the roll axis, where the motion control circuit also contains programming and a memory to determine an offset value to be applied to the results of an Ephemeris calculation in the solar tracking algorithm based on Kalman filtering. 12. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, further comprising: wireless circuitry configured to transmit performance monitoring information to a central backend management system using a secure communication channel protocol, wherein the wireless communication between the central backend management system allows substantial reduction in cabling and conduit laid throughout the site where the two axis tracker assembly is located, wherein the performance monitoring information collected and stored in a memory in the housing includes two or more of information for 1) a string of CPV cells supplying DC power in the solar array, 2) AC power, AC/DC current, AC/DC Voltages, and current to voltage (IV) curves associated with the inverter circuits, 3) configuration information of the string in the solar array, 4) ground fault conditions on the CPV cells, 5) a direct normal irradiation (DNI) information for the solar array, 6) streaming video captured by a camera associated with the solar array, 7) weather information including air temperature, wind speed, precipitation, and other local weather information where the solar array is located, 8) tracking information of the angular coordinates of the solar array, and 9) geographic position information of the solar at the solar site as generated by GPS circuitry, and where then real time alarms and events are generated based on these collected parameters. 13. The integrated electronics housing of claim 11, where a multiplicity of a three phase AC inverter circuits are installed into a NEMA 4 chamber of the housing, and each AC inverter circuit has a single stage DC-to-AC voltage conversion circuit, and the multiplicity of the three phase AC inverter circuits electrically connect into a common three phase AC output to feed a single Utility Grid transformer, where each inverter circuit receives a bipolar DC voltage supplied from its own set of CPV cells, where the three-phase AC inverter circuit has no need for supplemental input DC voltage level boosting strategies, including a DC input boost stage to increase the DC input voltage level to a higher DC voltage level for the DC to AC conversion, because the supplied bipolar DC input voltage level from the set of CPV cells is high enough to directly convert to the AC working voltage level. 14. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where the motor control circuitry is installed into a NEMA 4 chamber of the housing, and where the motor control circuitry receives a calculated target position that the CPV cells should be moved to from the solar tracking algorithm as well as a current position of the CPV cells from reed switches mounted on the two axis tracker assembly and a tracked amount of revolutions of the actuator drives and drive motors. 15. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where a NEMA 4 chamber of the housing contains the one or more inverter circuits, the motion control circuits, the backplane communication bus coupled to each of the circuits in the NEMA 4 chamber, the local code employed for the solar tracking algorithm, a central processor coupled the backplane communication bus and supplies processing power to any of the circuits coupled to the backplane communication bus, and where the solar tracking algorithm uses both 1) an Ephemeris calculation, with local GPS position data of the two axis tracker mechanism from a global positioning circuit that is part of the integrated electronics housing to determine angular coordinates that CPV cells contained in the solar array should be ideally positioned to relative to a current position of the Sun and 2) applies Kalman filtering that is continuously updated with power measurements over the time of an operation the two axis tracker assembly to create the offset matrix to results of the Ephemeris calculation, where the measured actual power output comes from the (I-V) curves taken off the inverter circuits. 16. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where a NEMA 3 chamber of the housing contains a set of fans fed by a filter that bring cooling from exterior to the housing, a set of heat sinks attached to the electronics circuits in the NEMA 4 chamber, and high heat generating components including a set of inductors for the inverter circuits; and a NEMA 4 chamber contains a high speed interface to integrate local weather station data through the high speed interface, which the weather data is then communicated to a central backend management system over an Internet. 17. The integrated electronics housing of claim 1, where metrology circuitry is contained inside the housing or fed over a wireless local area network for the site where the two axis tracker assembly is installed and includes at least receiving measurements from an anemometer, and the metrology circuitry is configured when the anemometer detects high winds, a command is generated to place the solar array to go into wind stow mode. 18. A method for a two-axis tracker assembly having a CPV solar array; comprising: operating an integrated electronics housing that contains both system electronics and power generation circuits for the two-axis tracker assembly having the CPV solar array, where the integrated electronics housing contains at least a communication bus, motion control circuits, and inverter circuits, and then acts as the local system control point for that two-axis solar tracker mechanism;supplying three-phase AC voltage to a utility power grid interface transformer from the inverter circuits, where each inverter receives a bipolar DC voltage supplied from its own set of CPV cells;moving the CPV cells of the two-axis solar tracker mechanism to angular coordinates resulting from a solar tracking algorithm with the motion control circuits; andfacilitating communications of information, including parameters of power being generated by the inverter circuits, between the motion control circuits and the AC inverter circuits via the communication bus in order to fine tune an AC power generated out of the two axis tracker mechanism. 19. The method of claim 18, further comprising: detecting a ground fault with any the CPV cells from the solar array feeding a first inverter circuit, where the ground fault circuitry is contained within the housing and connects to the communication bus to send notice of a fault to both 1) the inverter circuit to activate its isolation contacts and 2) to a wireless circuit for reporting to the central management server, andreporting measurements from performance monitoring circuitry contained in the motion control circuits, inverter circuits, and ground fault circuitry distributed, which provides remote measurements and notification of alarms in near real time to the central management server. 20. The method of claim 18, further comprising: performing an Ephemeris calculation with a central processor in the housing using local GPS position data of the two axis tracker mechanism from a global positioning circuit that is part of the integrated electronics housing to determine angular coordinates that CPV cells contained in the solar array should be ideally positioned to relative to a current position of the Sun;applying Kalman filtering that is continuously updated with power measurements over the time of an operation the two axis tracker assembly to create the offset matrix to the results of the Ephemeris calculation, where the measured actual power output comes from the (I-V) curves taken off the inverter circuits.
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이 특허에 인용된 특허 (4)
Nielsen,Henning Roar; Hjort,Thomas E., Apparatus for and methods of polyphase power conversion.
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