Driven by the solar developer’s continuous pursuit of the lowest levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for a utility-scale plant equipped with bifacial solar modules, solar tracker suppliers are experiencing multiple key challenges to remain competitive. A few major challenges are undulating fields, making the most out of the available irradiance in cloudy or diffused irradiance conditions, and resilience to extreme weather events.
In the above context, NEXTracker’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) & Co-founder, Marco Garcia, in an exclusive interview with TaiyangNews, gave a brief overview of NEXTracker’s global business scenario at the recently concluded RE+ 2024 event.
TaiyangNews: We continue to see growth in the tracker market. You're the market leader. We just reported about it in our recent tracker report at TaiyangNews. And, you have been the market leader for 9 years now. Isn't that boring?
Marco Garcia: Not boring at all. It has never been boring to be the leader for 9 years as the No.1 in global tracker market share. One of the reasons we have been able to maintain our leadership in the global tracker market share is that we are focused on all the key markets around the world. For us, the No.1 tracker market is the US. This large market offers good government incentives, good applications, a strong EPC (Engineering Procurement & Construction) base, and strong asset owners focused on the best technology and best long-term performance. We are focused on the Latin American market; specifically, Brazil has been a very large market for us. We also focus on Spain and the rest of the European market. For the Middle East, the market is growing primarily in Saudi Arabia. India and Australia have also been a high-growth market for us. In these 6 key markets around the world, we are focused on participating and providing a high level of customer service and technical solutions that help us win.
TaiyangNews: The global market has been growing incredibly over the years, so have trackers. What's the actual reason the market and the customers are embracing trackers?
Marco Garcia: In the financial model, the tracking system gives 20% to 25% additional energy gain annually. When bifacial modules were introduced several years ago into the market, they increased the benefits of trackers over fixed tilt. It is driven by the financial model. Especially, in utility-scale and in some of these markets where they are going to get the additional gain, the economics look better in the financial model, so the utility-scale points to trackers. The distributed generation (DG) or the commercial & industrial (C&I) market are also very strong tracker markets for us.
TaiyangNews: How do you see the market for trackers growing further, especially when you look at markets with certain saturation?
Marco Garcia: I think trackers, equipped with their intelligence and flexibility, after tracking the Sun from morning to evening, can produce a curve of steady peak power that matches well with the loads. That is always helpful. What we do with our TrueCapture software is to improve the performance of the curve during backtracking in the morning and evening when we eliminate shading with our TrueCapture software. Then during a few events such as clouds, rain, etc., where you can't see the Sun exactly, we can back off and provide a slight tracking and improve performance during those hours of the day or days of the year. Our TrueCapture software and innovations in software, again, help us to be a leader in the tracker market.
TaiyangNews: Let's maybe talk about innovations and developments because there have been so many. Can you just give us a brief overview of the most important innovations and developments in trackers?
Marco Garcia: In the good old days, when the big flat rectangle project sites were available, one could use all kinds of trackers; those days don't exist anymore. It's hard to find those sites. We are seeing more sites with undulating terrain. A few years ago, we launched the XTR, the terrain-following tracker that allows developers to go ahead with land that cannot be disturbed due to certain environmental restrictions. Here we can follow the terrain in the North-South (NS) direction with our trackers and minimize or eliminate grading and earth movement. So, the EPC companies would love to hear this, right? Whenever the companies can minimize civil works and earth movement, it reduces the development time and construction cycle, and we can install the trackers faster.
Terrain causes shading between the rows. We follow the terrain with our XTR software and eliminate the shading with our TrueCapture software.
TaiyangNews: I think it is also about continued cost reduction. And it is great that the module prices, not for the manufacturers, but at least for the EPCs and the demand side, the prices have gone down quite a bit. What does that mean for trackers? Also, raw material prices went up at some point; how are you contributing?
Marco Garcia: We continue to see strong tracker demand for all the tracker markets we discussed earlier. Lower module prices are good for the PV industry. This enhances its availability for residential, small commercial, rooftop, and carports, etc. So, low module prices help the market. We continue to see high tracker demand, even with reduced PV prices, because you get 20% to 25%, in some cases 30% annual gain with the tracker compared to fixed tilt. Thus, it still makes sense to do the solar plant with trackers.
Moreover, by layering in our software, we try to make smarter trackers that can be remotely controlled with our self-powered controller – a small brain in the center of the tracker. Thanks to climate change, we are seeing many more extreme weather events and we have designed a tracker resilient for the long term, like the high availability of tracking of the Sun despite high wind events. Also, defending the tracker in the US is a big deal primarily in hail-prone areas like Texas. We defend the tracker against hail with a product called the Hail Pro 75. It can track almost vertically to over 75°, and the angle of incidence of the hail protects those modules. This feature has 3rd party validation. We have also worked with insurance companies to ensure the protection of those assets.
TaiyangNews: Talk a bit about the consequences as the world is unfortunately drifting apart. We have these geopolitical consequences; energy security is much more in focus, and solar as the fastest-growing technology takes part in this. How are you contributing? How are you working on technology, job localization, etc.?
Marco Garcia: We have set up over 20 factories in the United States to bring our products closer to the project sites. We try to be within 1 day's truck drive from any solar project in the United States. The US local domestic content clause has helped us to maintain a leadership position. It has brought us closer to our asset-owners, who have large portfolios. We have entered into VC or volume commitment agreements with those asset owners. We can make commitments on domestic content for those projects that help us secure long-term relationships. And again, the layered-in software ensures optimal performance of those plants over the plant’s lifetime. We always want to make sure to get maximum energy production and protect assets. We want the asset to be available to track during all the hours of the day. We also want to protect it from extreme weather events like hail.
TaiyangNews: Let's talk about another important trend – sustainability. I think there is a whole picture of ESG, transparency, and many other sustainability topics. How are you looking into that?
Marco Garcia: We have launched a low-carbon tracker here in the United States and, so far, we have a strong interest in that product. The product comes at a slight premium as the raw materials and steel cost a little more. But we have customers who have requirements for this product in their portfolios and the economics makes sense for them. Talking about local content, not only in the United States, we produce trackers locally in Brazil, India, and Europe. We also have local suppliers in Australia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So, we try to provide local domestic content in all the key markets around the world to provide local jobs and be a real player in each one of those markets. I think that's probably very much appreciated locally.
TaiyangNews: Before we close, what are the 3 major challenges or areas you want to focus on in the next few years to advance trackers?
Marco Garcia: We want to continue to innovate our software to maximize energy production. We have software engineers or staff who are focused on ensuring tracker availability, energy production, avoiding shade, performing in weather events, staying in the Sun, and tracking as many hours of the day as possible, while protecting the tracker. We will continue to innovate with software to ensure availability and high-energy production. With the recent acquisition of a company called Ojjo that offers the Earth Truss, we have launched our foundation business at RE+. With the Earth Truss, we would be able to provide foundation solutions for hard rocky soil. In the past, the EPCs in the United States focused on foundation solutions. Now we are providing a more end-to-end solution with the help of Ojjo. We also have our NX Anchor system. The Ojjo system is for hard rocky soils and the NX anchor system is for softer soils, frost heave, and expansive clay soils. Thus, for soils where you want to anchor stronger foundations with less tonnage of steel, we have launched this interesting innovation. We believe that we are going to provide more important services to our EPC customers and long-term asset owners by getting involved in acquiring early geotech information, corrosion information, and soil information. So, we can provide solutions early in the project cycle and identify how we can optimize the trackers for those customers.
TaiyangNews: Solar generates around 5% of the power of the globe these days. If you look at that picture, that’s sort of a moon shot. What does it mean?
Marco Garcia: We are landing solar anywhere basically with our new foundation business; there is no soil type that we cannot address with our new foundation solutions.