It’s reported that the renewable energy accounts for approximately 20% of its energy mix in Mexico. In 2017, the Mexican Ministry of Energy announced a new energy transition plan on its official website and established the goal of new energy development. It is estimated that new energy will account for 30% by 2021 and 60% by 2050. And it is expected to become the world's seventh largest solar market in 2021. The application of fixed structure solar plants and solar tracker plants are evolving in a rapid way. In this chapter, we are going to share the case study of ANT-cloud solar tracker （single-axis 2P solar tracker）applied for solar plant in Mexico. Project background -Location: Mexico -Wind Speed: 40m/s -Installed: May 2021 -Size of system: 498KW -Array layout: 2×42 Product details - Module orientation: Portrait - Ramming pile embedment (below ground ):1500mm -Tracking range: ±50° - Module brand: Trina solar 495W -Modules per string:14 - String voltage: 1000V -Rail material: Galvanized carbon steel - Post: Galvanized carbon steel - Warranty: 5 years drive and control, 15 years structure Special Features Of The Ant-cloud solar tracker • Adopted synchronous multi-point actuator offering greater stability • Easy-installed actuator, only require one single person • SCADA platform for real time monitoring and offer smart  weather protection mode • Tracking algorithm: astronomical algorithm+ intelligent algorithm • Completed CPP wind tunnel testing for greater stability For more about the utilising of  Ant-cloud solar tracker, please click here to see the 1MW Power Park in Thailand.

Recently, a 1MW solar tracker project located in Rayong, Thailand is under smooth installation, which adopted Antaisolar ANT-cloud solar tracker with precast concrete foundation. Due to the impact of Covid-19, the completion will extended to at the end of August, 2021. About ANT-cloud ANT-cloud the multi-actuator single-axis 2P solar tracker, is the best match with bifacial modules. Designed with patent linear-actuator drive through electric synchronously, this advanced system is free from transmission bar which allows for quick installation, convenient maintenance and low consumption, effectively reducing the labor cost. What are the tracker’s advantages for this projects? As for installation efficiency , Antaisolar Ant-cloud is equipped with easy-installed actuator  which only require one single person to install, the patent torque tube fastener also provide a unique way for 2 times faster installation. Antaisolar’s sales engineers came on site to give any support for the smooth installation. Moreover, with Astronomical Algorithms+Intelligent Algorithms, Antaisolar Ant-cloud solar tracker can iterate the optimized tracking angle for each controller with a 0.5%-3% power generation increased compared with traditional algorithm. Upon completion, intelligent O&M based on self-developed SCADA platform can offer system potential risks forewarning and weather condition warning to ensure the stability of power plant. Ant-cloud solar tracker has proven to be proper solution for large scale solar power plants in many other countries such Mexico, China, Armenia, etc. A few of projects utilized Antaisolar’s tracker in Thailand are under production and will add to local clean energy generation.

It’s reported that the solar  project was collaborated with one of the most biggest solar distributors in South Africa. Located in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and owned by ALGOA FM, Antaisolar provided solar racking solution for this project during the whole process. The aluminum solar carport mounting system adopted for  project offers a simplified and economic solution providing shade for parking and solar power generation. It is designed with single row of parking with concrete foundation. Highly pre-assembled supporting bracket can be unfolded on site make installation more easier and thus save labor costs. Based on the vast expertise in solar racking structure designing and strict quality control on production, the project turned out to be a pleasing one after first collaboration. Antaisolar and the local distributor partner have decided to conduct further cooperation on other projects in South Africa, next few projects are also in preparation for installation. Moreover, they will also start cooperation in other African countries, like Kenya and Nigeria. In order to better fit local market needs, Antaisolar is planning to customize related KITs for different project types, so as to keep as general stock and thus facilitating distribution in the African market.

Recently , China's National Energy Administration (NEA) had released the new policy that its provincial offices should nominate counties where a trial program to push blanket rooftop solar can be carried out, in order to move the dial on small scale PV in the nation. According to new NEA policy, The state entity wants selected counties to have at least 20% of all residential roofs equipped with solar energy, as well as at least 30% of commercial and industrial structures; 40% of non-governmental public buildings, such as hospitals and schools; and half of the roofs on the national estate. The new policy has unleashed a wave of distributed solar in the domestic market. On July 16th, the Shaanxi Distributed PV Seminar hosted by PV men and PV Box was held at the in Xi'an. Nearly 400 people from design institutes, investors, distributors, EPC, PV equipment suppliers, and financial institutions gathered together to discuss the dual-carbon goals and the huge opportunities for distributed photovoltaic development under the promotion of the entire county. Antaisolar participated in this event to share the case study of its 50MW HDB distributed solar plants in Singapore, which is an example for mandate solar on roofs in pilot countries under NEA new policy. The project was for the first three tenders, which covering 300+ HDB blocks with totally capacity of 50MW and all completed. Confronted with 300+ diversified rooftop, and strict design requirements such as reserved passageway, non-destruction for roof and certified by a third-party design agency, it requires significant expertise to conduct on site survey and design ability for solar racking suppliers. Antaisolar finally provided only five solar racking design templates for all 300+ different rooftop based on strong designing capability and rich experience for distributed solar plants. Upon completion, it’s equivalent to powering 12500 four-room flats with solar energy, and estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 30000 tonnes per year, said HDB. The roof construction environment of distributed solar plants are more complicated and usually need high requirements from government. Solar racking is the most complex and critical part of the entire implementation process. It plays an important role in reducing the difficulty of construction and providing key calculation data for investors, EPCs, and Design Institutes. Under the plan for achieving carbon-neutral across the world, Antaisolar will focus on its brand positioning- Leading supplier of the whole industry chain in PV mounting system, and strive to provide efficient and innovative solar racking solutions for global clients as part of the effort to develop greener and more sustainable towns, while reducing carbon footprint.

With the total installed capacity of 100MW, located in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, the solar power plant was successfully gird connected at the end of June in 2021, in which 30MW utilized Antaisolar’s Tai-universal solar tracker. What are the challenges presented by both climate and terrain Adjacent to the Tengger Desert, there are many days of high wind speed and dusty weather throughout the year, also extremely low temperature in winter and large temperature difference between day and night. The landscape of this region is soft soil with undulating hills, forming a complex terrain. Why Tai-universal was chosen for this project? In order to achieve optimal BOS and LCOE, and based on on-site survey, Antaisolar provided Tai-universal, the single-aixs 2P solar tracker for best match for bifacial modules, which can resist gust wind speed up to 45m/s. In the tuyere area, a redundant damping system was designed to further enhance the wind resistance of the project. As for the foundation, PHC solution was adopted to offer strong stability and thus reducing installation cost . Taking into account of complex terrain, Antaisolar offered different length of footing to nearly reduce the cost of land leveling. Besides, the solar tracker controller adopted 800Vac power supply from the nearest inverter. By this way, it is free of lithium battery and don’t require much cable cost and  routing construction, which enhanced performance of the overall system under extremely low temperatures. Moreover, the intelligent tracking algorithm has obvious advantages in this complex terrain. It can completely avoid shadow occlusion during the backtracking under different slopes, and can also improve the power generation of bifacial module in the case of low radiation and high reflectivity. It is estimated that it can achieve 6% annual power generation augment compared with the traditional tracking algorithm. Wind energy+ solar energy, strong complementary energy model for local grid This 30MW solar power plant is the one more cooperation with local EPC, Antaisolar advanced products and considerable expertise are well recognized for the past record. With abundant wind resources, the project is close to a GW-level wind farm, the complementary energy model of photovoltaic + wind energy serve as a new way for popularizing clean energy.

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) had estimated that around 4.1 GW of new PV plants were grid connected in South korea in 2020. If confirmed by official statistics, this result would compare to 3.8 GW in 2019 and 2.4 GW in 2018 and would make 2020 the most successful year ever recorded by the country. Antaisolar in partnership with GS global to jointly promote the clean energy utilization since 2020 and numerous solar farms has already connected to local grid ranging from utility-scale to distributed solar projects. For ground-mounted solar plants, either tailor-made or universal solar racking solution can be offered based on special needs. Antaisolar provided ground mounting solution with three main types of foundation, that is solar ground screw, concrete and driven piles. As for flat terrain, it’s commonly to adopt solar ground screw as a foundation. It can be installed by manual piling machine or pile driver machine without excavation and can be widely used in all kinds of geological conditions, such as foreshore, grassland, etc. While for uneven or sloping terrain, driven piles are best suited to these areas which have clay, gravel, dense sand and low water tables, where the ground has good soil cohesiveness. They are commonly used on large-scale projects as they have a number of advantages over other foundation types, including speed of installation, accuracy and low cost. For most of large scale solar plants in Korea, Antaisolar offers solar racking solution with single or double pile footing, which can also achieve great flexibility. Antaisolar has supplied a wide portfolio of solar racking solution ranging from KW scale to MW scale in South Korea. Armed with high quality control by in- house production and innovative design for efficient installing and high robustness, the solar mounting system has been recognized and under blossoming utilization for renewable projects.

With the industry scaling toward hundreds of gigawatts of installed capacity, even 1% risk represents the potential for significant losses. As the utilization of large-scale solar plants accelerates into areas more prone to severe weather events, it’s of vital importance on how to manage those weather risks before initial designing. Thankfully, there are ways to mitigate extreme weather risks by addressing site-and region-specific conditions in advance and making strategic design, engineering, and procurement choices to lower those risks. There exists some solar plants damaged by extreme weather and thus caused huge loss. Actually, it’s a result of a combination of factors such as structural design, product quality, later operation and maintenance, etc. As a solar tracker manufacturer, Antaisolar has vast expertise in addressing the extreme weather challenge to large-scale solar plants. In this chapter Antaisolar is going to share some insights on structural design and see how it’s important for you to consider it when building a solar plant. In fact, the threat posed by strong wind is mainly caused by resonance. The multi-point drive solar tracker launched by Antaisolar can perfectly solve this problem. After the construction of the tracking support is completed, there will be a natural frequency f1, and the wind speed around the power station will cause the system to generate a vibration frequency f2. When f2 is close to or equal to f1, the system will resonate, which will cause twisting and lose stability, endangering the safety of the system. The multi-point drive solution is to largely increase f1, thereby widening the gap between the two and fundamentally solving the problem. Due to the use of multi-point drive technology, the system has one third wind torque three times higher natural frequency than traditional trackers. Additionally, the entire cost can be reduced by 5% to 20%, especially in areas with high wind pressure, the advantages will be more. The solar industry is increasingly recognizing that specialized approaches like wind tunnel testing are needed for dynamic wind loading because building codes simply don’t apply to these kinds of thin, flexible structures. Antaisolar’s Helios and Clytie series solar tracker are all tested and approved by CPP. Based on CPP’s leadership in understanding the effects of wind on solar collectors, their recommendations can enable Antaisolar designers and engineers to make modifications where needed and ensure the success design of a safe and efficient system. To sum it up , in order to keep it stable and safe under extreme bad weather, Antaisolar innovative solar trackers are developed from initial structural design to make it stay robust and it’s just one of the key factors for reducing solar project risk. In the next chapter , We will focus on another influencing factor in details, stay tuned!

Recently, one agricultural light complementary photovoltaic power station has made its grid-connection successfully in Japan with installed capacity of the 820.8KW. The whole project adopted Antaisolar agricultural farmland mounting system with AL6005-T6 structure to ensure corrosion resistance and stability. In this project, Antaisolar proposed a bottom fixing solution . Compared with the traditional top-down installation method, there is no need to climb brackets and stepping on panels. Therefore, it realized the convenient installation of fixing the solar panel from bottom and thus improves the efficiency and safety of construction.  Besides, in order to cope with the sloping terrain, Antaisolar engineers provided different column length and the exposed length of the ground screw after carefully calculations, which perfectly matched the slope application and deeply recognized by our client. In addition, there are numerous of the agricultural light complementary photovoltaic power station in Japan adopted Antaisolar solar racking solutions, with capacity ranging from 100KW to 1MW.  In South korea, there existed a 400KW agricultural light complementary photovoltaic power stations which utilized Antaisolar solar racking system. It is not only the first aluminum mounting structure for agricultural PV plant but also the biggest PV plant till now in Korean territory. The combination of agriculture and photovoltaic applications is a new model. It will not change the nature of land use, and thus can save land resources. Agricultural light power plant can not only effectively use solar energy resources to output of clean green energy, but also to achieve efficient cultivation, which realized the comprehensive utilization of land resources and solar energy resources.

Market Potential A majority of Madagascar’s renewable energy potential remains unharnessed. The country has high hydro, solar, and wind potential and considerable biomass resources. In its New Energy Policy (NEP), the government identified an ambition to produce 85% of the country’s power from renewable sources by 2030 Madagascar has a large solar energy potential. Almost all regions of Madagascar receive over 2,800 hours of sunshine per year, with the daily solar radiation ranging from 1,500 to 2,100 kWh/m2. PV systems are currently utilized for powering public buildings such as health clinics, as well as off-grid community electrification solutions. A few foreign companies are assisting with various electrification projects on a small-scale (i.e. solar-powered pumps for clean water) Solar farms in Madagascar, solar racking provided by Antaisolar The total capacity of this ground project is 6MW, which is comprised of several projects ranging from 1to 2MW and installed in Diego, Tamatave, Majunga and other places. Due to the frequent cyclone season, the maximum wind speed is very high and up to 60m/s. Madagascar has a tropical rainforest climate, with lots of rain, flat but muddy land. Antai Solar adopted concrete foundation with aluminum mounting system with measurement and calculation by the engineer for ensuring sufficient strength in cyclone weather. Antai Solar provide the solar mounting solutions through OCEAN TRADE, and the project was successfully completed under the efforts of parties. Among one of the projects, Mr Andry Nirina Rajoelina, president of Malagasy, had visited and inaugurated the 2MW solar hybrid project in Tamatave. It’s estimated that the project will allows the cut of 1400t of CO2 per year!