Since its launch in Brazil in 2015, Nextracker's business in Brazil has never stopped growing. The company's latest move was the establishment of the Brazilian Solar Center of Excellence in August.
This is the tracker maker's first research and development (R&D) facility outside of North America, and it's Nextracker's commitment to the large-scale terrestrial PV industry in Latin America's largest solar PV country.
Kristan Kirsh, vice president of global marketing for Nextracker, said: "We want to use the intellectual property built in Brazil for large-scale ground photovoltaic power plants in Brazil." The response to setting up a base in Brazil has been positive, and the company aims to take advantage of the opportunity to start production in this South American country as soon as possible. .
Nextracker chose to set up an R&D facility in Sorocaba, near Sao Paulo, due to multiple cumulative factors, including the strong presence of Flex (Nextracker's parent company, which has three tracker controller production plants), and Brazil is Nextracker's second largest global manufacturer market, Brazil's large-scale ground photovoltaics are growing rapidly, etc.
"This is the largest solar tracking R&D facility and testing laboratory in South America," Kirsh said, adding that there are other facilities in the region, but they are all fixed inclination.
Additionally, locating the facility in the Southern Hemisphere will allow Nextracker to more fully study the climatic and environmental differences at its R&D facility in Fremont, California.
"There are a lot of things we can do in Brazil that we can't necessarily do here (Fremont)," Kirsh said. Companies can test hardware and software products on rolling hills, as well as other types of structures.
In addition to providing dedicated space for rolling hills and fixed inclinations, Nextracker will also study and analyze tracker technology applications in other fields such as agricultural photovoltaics, wind testing, and larger module applications of 610MW.
In addition to testing and analyzing the terrain dedicated to the company's trackers, the company will also set up a larger dedicated area for training third-party installers and EPC partners, which the US manufacturer has been doing for years and hopes to add. Work hard.
One of Nextracker's goals is to make the facility a destination for the industry not only in Brazil but throughout the region. Kirsh added: "This is where the large-scale ground-mounted PV industry goes to learn, to get trained and to find the best products."
According to Brazilian trade agency Absolar, Brazil is dominated by distributed generation (DG), with almost 70% of installed capacity coming from DG, but large-scale ground-mounted PV is expected to grow exponentially, Kirsh said.
Nextracker has provided trackers for nearly 6GW of large-scale ground-mounted PV projects in development or in operation in Brazil, with over 2.6GW of trackers delivered in the past nine months.