SMA folds Echelon’s technology into inverters

Echelon (Nasdaq:ELON) is taking its infrastructure products to a new level. The San Jose, Calif.-based company announced today that its LonWorks technology is moving into the solar industry for the first time.

Echelon’s technology is being incorporated into solar energy installations by SMA America, a U.S. subsidiary of Germany’s SMA Solar Technology, which specializes in solar inverter technology. Echelon makes infrastructure products that allow devices including appliances and electricity meters to be smart and interconnected.

Echelon’s i.LON SmartServer, already being used in a number of energy monitoring capacities, is now going into inverter monitoring. The i.LON SmartServer—equipped with communications drivers for SMA’s inverters—can monitor and measure electricity generated from solar panels. This helps to maintain efficient operation of the panels and can also be used for reporting purposes, Echelon said. SMA plans to use the technology with its Sunny Central 250U and Sunny Tower inverters.

The i.LON SmartServer can automatically read data from the inverters, and that information can then be used by energy and building management systems for energy verification and rebate programs.

“Echelon’s technology provides a high level of reliability and flexibility, which we considered necessary in order to offer a more efficient and diverse solution to our customers,” said Jeffrey Philpott, SMA America's director of marketing, in a news release. “Because the LonWorks platform is an open technology, it interfaces well with most existing subsystems that our clients use, making data more accessible and helping to reduce overall systems costs.”

A number of companies are trying to add intelligence to solar inverters to harness data that could improve systems' economics.

Herzliya, Israel-based SolarEdge recently emerged from stealth with a technology that works in place of central inverters to harvest and monitor power from solar panels. The company announced a partnership with BP Solar to commercialize a power-harvesting system for solar panels that could improve energy efficiency by 15 percent to 20 percent while reducing costs (see SolarEdge partners with BP as it emerges from stealth).

Petaluma, Calif.-based Enphase Energy is known for its micro-inverter system for solar installations, which improves energy harvest and increases the reliability of residential and commercial solar systems. The micro-inverter connects each solar module to the Internet and enables installers and solar system owners to see the performance of the system.

The difference between the Enphase system and traditional PVAC units, where the inverter and module are individually installed units, is Enphase’s standalone micro-inverter allows the system to work with most off-the-shelf solar modules (see Enphase introduces micro-inverter system).