SUNGUIDE’s Vision and Future
Introduction
Greetings! I am Choi Il, working at TIMEROBOT’s technology platform to enhance productivity for large-scale power plants.
At SUNGUIDE, we tackle the inevitable challenges faced during development—environmental issues with each panel and inverter-related complexities—by addressing them through the lens of maintenance and finding innovative solutions.
Through our MLPE development journey, we aim to share our experiences, questioning the inconveniences often taken for granted with a “Why?” and resolving them with the key principles of maintenance and productivity.
Productivity and Maintenance in Large-Scale Power Plants
Since 2024, the inverter industry has increasingly spotlighted “maintenance” as a critical keyword. Until now, companies have experimented with various voltage control methods and software solutions.
While maintenance interpretations vary across companies, we view it as a proactive approach to improve unpredictable external environmental changes, rather than just introducing new technologies or concepts. TIMEROBOT has defined maintenance as the ability to easily control and analyze countless panels exposed to the elements. We set out to solve these challenges accordingly.
TIMEROBOT’s technology development culture has been geared toward enhancing the challenges faced by large-scale power plants. The core purpose of maintenance is to boost productivity in these plants, contributing to profitability and longevity. Extending the lifespan of solar power plants can be achieved by reducing various stresses through consistent maintenance during operations. While software maintenance platforms can address issues between strings and string inverters, we recognized that problems in a string often stem from individual panels, not the string itself. Despite this understanding, software solutions controlling the string—often labeled as hybrid inverters—couldn’t fully resolve these issues. Learning from various companies’ MLPE and hybrid inverters, we opted to develop a dynamic current control method tailored to large-scale power plant environments, moving away from the static voltage control methods that lack variability throughout the day.
Connect Data: Linking Inverter and Panel Contamination Information
To connect an inverter with each panel’s data, we first need to understand the data of each panel, which requires hardware installation across multiple devices. However, this approach was no different from the voltage control methods used by existing companies. Following such methods would require adding resistors to control voltage, leading to greater power loss. In reality, inverters are not concerned with current fluctuations caused by natural phenomena, as there’s no way to control them. What matters is not the momentary current changes caused by passing clouds, but rather persistent issues like bird droppings, dust, or leaves that continuously degrade efficiency and performance by adhering to panels. To address this, frequently monitoring each panel’s condition is crucial.
To tackle these challenges, we realized the need for a system that can simultaneously identify problematic panels and ensure maintenance until customers can address repairs. We identified a new challenge: creating a solution that is more efficient and cost-effective than software and voltage control methods. Solving these issues required extensive research, including countless paper analyses and experiments—a challenging and continuous process. But amidst this, what were the real-world experiences of our company?
Below are the records of tasks we undertook to develop our hybrid inverter.
How many processes did we fail, and how long did we wait to achieve international patents?
Ultimately, our goal is to enable existing inverter companies to create hybrid inverters using our MLPE, connecting panel management with various inverters and platform tasks. We aim to facilitate easy data integration between inverters and panels, especially for installers transitioning from central inverters to string inverters.
Existing Companies’ Control Method: Voltage Control
Traditionally, companies controlled voltage, which barely fluctuates throughout the day, to address issues with frequently changing current, operating systems accordingly. This led to the following challenges:
- Unnecessary Control: Controlling stable voltage resulted in more losses than gains.
- High Costs: Voltage control required numerous electronic components, leading to price increases, making it impractical for the large-scale power plants that truly need such solutions.
What We Aimed to Solve
- Transition from static voltage control to dynamic current control with high variability.
- Periodically check at set times each day to easily identify problematic panels.
- Avoid halting total power production during issues, focusing on removing contaminants from problematic panels to boost productivity.
- Establish compatibility with existing string inverters to gain widespread adoption.
- Enter large-scale power plants with affordable pricing.
What We Sought to Achieve
- Maximize Production Efficiency: Prevent neglect of problematic panels through periodic automated inspections, enhancing productivity.
- Reduce Management Costs: Save on personnel and unnecessary inspections for large-scale power plant operations.
- Extend Lifespan: Reduce stress on panels and inverters through periodic maintenance, improving longevity and productivity.
- Manage Each Panel: Managing individual panels with minimal staff increases operational efficiency compared to managing total power.
Collaboration with Existing Companies
Launching a product requires diverse infrastructure setups and production environments. However, we realized that no matter how well we operated, overlapping sales and production systems with existing companies would inevitably lead to increased costs. These costs would ultimately be passed on to customers, raising prices and reducing demand.
We discovered that integrating various existing company channels and collaboration tools into a single platform to facilitate efficient communication aligns with our goals. Thus, we decided to seek collaborative partners.
Partnering with Inverter Manufacturers
Existing inverter companies installed software to assess contamination by calculating the power output of strings connected to string inverters, branding them as efficient hybrid inverters.
SUNGUIDE leverages data generated by existing string inverters to establish periodic automation, enhancing efficiency.
Through our app, we enable automatic recognition of various data on each panel’s power generation status, allowing users to identify and address panel issues with a single click.
This not only prevents power waste but also allows early detection of contamination on specific panels, avoiding system-wide shutdowns. By cleaning problematic panels, managers can preemptively prevent hotspots caused by contamination.
SUNGUIDE dynamically integrates various data within our current control platform, maximizing efficiency while adhering to power generation regulations, ultimately extending system lifespan.
Focusing on Cost Reduction for Large-Scale Power Plant Productivity
The services introduced above are core components of how MLPE controls and optimizes power generation efficiency.
Our international patent platform represents an integrated partner ecosystem that enables manufacturers to sell exclusively to large-scale power plants with superior quality in greater volumes.
We aim to take this further by building a global production partner platform that unifies all our resources and patented technologies, prioritizing productivity and affordability as core values.
Offering Partners the Benefits of International Patented Technology
Our International Patent Partner Platform focuses on productivity efficiency, emphasizing price competitiveness and globally patented core technology as key drivers.
Through various production services that transform inefficiency into efficiency, we prioritize price competitiveness and efficiency, delivering value to our collaborative partners.
We envision this integration not merely as a platform for providing patent rights and facilitating sales when needed, but as a comprehensive system that drives globally integrated sales efficiency from start to finish.
Conclusion
Over the past seven years—a period both short and long—we’ve achieved a virtuous cycle of efficiency through a current control perspective, a path few have taken. By leveraging data from individual services, we’ve enhanced the usability of others.
Compared to when we started, it feels like we’ve finally earned the title of an international patent holder.
While product molding and design can be pursued with manufacturing partners driving production, establishing long-term trust for stable sales and organizational profit involves diverse systems, stakeholders, and team members, requiring an organizational approach.
To address these challenges, fostering consensus among team members alongside incremental progress is essential. Moving forward, we’ll continue to explore better paths through persistent efforts and improvements.
Thank You for Joining Us on This Journey!
