Convergence Energy LLC, Lake Geneva, WI, is a full service developer/integrator working in Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado and Texas since 2007. In the normal course of doing business they time-and-time again kept running into issues preventing potential customers from installing solar on their homes or businesses. Those issues included shading, building orientation, aesthetics, as well as other situations precluding them from installing systems on their properties.
Not wanting to walk away from potential customers, Convergence developed an offering it refers to as Networked Solar. The concept is simple, lease a parcel of land and install hosted solar solutions addressing the customer issues described above. Convergence Energy handled all aspects of the project, including design, engineering, permitting, incentive administration, financing and installation.
The Convergence Energy Solar Farm 660kW site (almost 2,000 microinverters) hosts 99 dual axis trackers consisting of panels from Helios Solar Works, trackers from OPEL and Degerenergie, and microinverters supplied by Enphase. Dual axis trackers were chosen to maximize energy production, which is approximately 30 percent over fixed mount arrays. Helios was chosen for not only their high quality and efficient monocyrstalline design, but also the fact that they are locally manufactured in Milwaukee, WI. Enphase microinverters were spec’d into the system architecture for their high efficiency, reliability, intelligent design, ease of installation and robust monitoring system, Enlighten. According to Convergence, the Enlighten system is perhaps the finest monitoring system in the industry and because of the multiple systems and investors; it provided a great selling tool. Review a section of the farm on Enlighten here.
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Finally, as the photos illustrate, the farm was planted with mid-height sunflowers to further optimize the renewable aspects of the site. With over 7-acres of sunflowers planted, it is estimated that the seeds will yield enough oil, when processed, to operate the tractors that work the adjacent 100-acre commercial nursery for an entire year.
I’ve been saying this since Enphase came out with its first micro inverter. Large scale or small, using micro inverters is the best way to do PV systems. Nice work Convergence!