PowerRack is PowerField’s moveable, ballasted racking system utilized in residential, business, industrial, and now utility-scale photo voltaic.
From pv journal USA
An concept that began with PowerField Power co-founder David Flory and Paul Burdick tinkering in a storage is now a rising firm scaling manufacturing, funding and undertaking pipeline. Each Flory and Burdick come from photo voltaic backgrounds and aimed to discover a easy, inexpensive racking resolution. That tinkering led to the event of the PowerRack, which is an injection-molded high-density polyethylene container that may be stuffed on web site and used to mount photo voltaic panels of virtually any measurement, with out obligatory instruments.
pv journal USA spoke with Drew Bond, co-founder and chief government officer, Patrick Fleming, chief operations officer, and Corbin Abshier, director of enterprise growth, on the historical past of PowerRack. One of many first installations of PowerRack was on the Nationwide Renewable Power Lab in Golden, Colo., the place they put a two-year take a look at mannequin. So far, the corporate has put in PowerRacks supporting greater than 4 MW of residential and business photo voltaic in addition to moveable installations, such because the one at this 12 months’s Coachella music competition.
In seven years, the Virginia-based firm has scaled manufacturing a number of instances, raised $1.3 million in funding and is now elevating a Collection A for $5 million to extend gross sales, manufacturing, and product growth. for world distribution.
In 2022 the corporate landed its first utility-scale contract for an set up in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania the place the developer, Limitless Power, has overcome challenges round web site situations and environmental issues and never builders get the undertaking to the end line. The developer has already sunk some huge cash into the undertaking, in order that they want an answer that can get the undertaking up and operating as rapidly and effectively as doable.
As soon as the contract was signed, it was delayed for a 12 months because of allowing points, however as soon as authorised, the PowerRacks had been put in, and the modules had been mounted in 4 weeks. The undertaking is in a ShopRite retailer, the place 8,800 PowerRacks comprise 4,400 Hanwha Qcells 480 W photo voltaic modules in a 2.1 MW system, powering greater than 85% of the shop’s power wants.
In line with Fleming, the location has groundwater points and there are exploratory nicely tools on the location that must be prevented, so getting into with a conventional racking system will not work. The developer has already sunk some huge cash into the undertaking, in order that they want an inexpensive resolution. PowerRacks met their wants, and whereas the undertaking was ten instances bigger than something PowerField had carried out earlier than, they stated they solely wanted to have one discipline worker on web site to get the job carried out.
The racking is dropped at the location as empty 15-pound plastic containers, crammed with any dry free combination materials comparable to gravel or crushed stone. The photo voltaic modules slide simply into the racking and are held in place with clips. The clips are hooked up by hand, with out the necessity for instruments. When it is time to decommission the photo voltaic set up, the modules are eliminated, the racking is emptied, and it may be faraway from the location and recycled.
PowerRacks was additionally used to mount a short lived photo voltaic set up to energy the lighting on the Coachella music competition held in April in Indio, California. Overdrive Power Options selected PowerRack after seeing them at a commerce present and pondering their portability would meet their wants. Neel Vasavada, founder and president of Overdrive stated a crew of 4 put in 15 kW of photo voltaic distributed throughout ten areas.
“And we have by no means used the product earlier than. It took us 10 min. one location – much less time than it takes to function a gasoline generator,” he stated.
When the competition was over and it was time to disassemble the non permanent photo voltaic set up, Vasavada defined that “disassembly” can’t be utilized in the identical manner as different merchandise right here.
“We use the PowerRack primarily as a result of there isn’t a disassembly of the racks themselves, apart from eradicating the plastic locking items after eradicating the panels,” he stated.
With PowerRacks being moveable and sitting above floor, installers have a number of choices relating to cable administration. Fleming famous that there’s a channel within the rack the place the cables are situated alongside the sidewalls of the rack and up underneath the modules, as in any system. Cables might be run above floor with cable hangers or messenger cables, or the location might be trenched if that works higher for the set up.
So far, PowerField has offered its racks in 38 states, with clients starting from electrical utilities to householders. The corporate has just lately expanded its manufacturing capability to satisfy rising demand and PowerField is growing future variations of the PowerRack to accommodate extra modules, totally different pitch angles and extra. buyer necessities.
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