Taiwan-based Sun Rise E&T is currently the world's third largest maker of support assembly used in floating PV systems, next to France-based Ciel & Terre International and China-based Sungrow Power Supply, but it stands a chance of becoming the biggest one in 2020 due to fast growing demand in India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos and other Southeast Asian countries, according to company chairman Joshua Tung.
To tap these markets, Sun Rise will cooperate with PV EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contractors and PV project undertakers and plans to set production lines there.
In anticipation of substantial increases in orders, Sun Rise will expand annual production capacity to the level that can support total installation capacity of 300MWp by year-end 2020, compared to the present 110MWp.
Founded in 1995, Sun Rise began making HDPE (high-density polyethylene) net cages used in marine fish culture in 1999, and has become the globally second largest maker of large-size net cages (60-80 meters in diameter) with products exported to 55 countries including Japan, Australia, Canada and Norway.
Sun Rise in 2010 extended development to support assembly used in floating PV systems installed on inland water bodies, consisting of floating brackets used to bolster PV modules on surface of water, pipeline bridges to connect power lines from floating PV modules to inverters, HDPE walk way decks used to install and maintain floating PV modules.
For such support assembly, Sun Rise obtained a patent in Taiwan in 2015, ones in China, Japan, the Philippines in 2016 and ones in Thailand and the US in 2017. Sun Rise has so far obtained relevant patents in 45 countries and is in process of applying patents in four other countries.
According to Where Sun Meets Water: Floating Solar Market Report published by the World Bank in October 2018, global cumulative installation capacity for floating PV systems increased from 10MWp in 2014 to 1.1GWp in 2018. If 1% or 10% of surface areas of reservoirs around the world are installed with floating PV systems, the total installation capacity is estimated at 404GWp and 4,044GWp respectively.
Sun Rise E&T chairman Joshua Tung
Photo: Nuying Huang, Digitimes, February 2020
Article translated by Adam Hwang
