IdeemaTec Wins Tracker Projects in U.S. Southeast

IdeemaTec, the Wallerfing, Germany-based tracker manufacturer, announced at SPI that it has won new projects in Georgia and Tennessee following the opening of its first U.S. office in Charlotte, in July.

September 14, 2016 Charles W. Thurston

An Ideematec installation in Tennessee.

Image: Ideematec

This year, IdeemaTec is supplying 90 MW of tracking systems to states the the U.S. Southeast, including North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, says Christian Salzeder, the CEO of the company. The company is working with EPC Vis Solis, of Franklin, Tennessee, on a portion of the projects. “We also have supplied several projects in Latin America, including 23 MW in Mexico, and others in Chile and Brazil,” he says.

“We will not manufacture in US and we also do not manufacture in Europe. The strategy is to work with a lean team and with a low overhead, as we successfully do in Europe as well,” Salzeder notes. We are an engineering expert and we optimize our outsourced international supply chain, sourcing from Mexico, India, China, Europe, Turkey and Brazil,” he explains.

While IdeemaTec is keen to expand in the U.S. market, it has become a powerhouse in the EMEA. “We are one of the leading supplier of tracking systems in the EMEA region. We supplied our trackers to countries including Jordan, Rwanda, South Africa, Namibia, and various other countries,” he says.

Namibia has become an early adopted of solar in the region, thanks to IdeemaTec. The company delivered 80 safeTrack Horizon trackers for the Otjozondjupa solar farm project earlier this year. The installation, at the power station near Grootfontein, will have a total capacity of 5 MW. The systems track the position of the sun on a horizontal basis, equipped with 700 First Solar thin-film modules. The power station, which was developed by HopSol Africa, is IdeemaTec’s third project in Namibia. The forecast 14,000 megawatt hours of solar power generated per year will be fed into the grid of the state power supply company NamPower, resulting in a long-term reduction of Namibia’s dependency on electricity imports.

“In total we have supplied about 40,000 tracking systems during the last 10 years. IdeemaTec’s single row tracking system with a centralized drive unit enables “free accessibility to the hole site by working without a push pull bar and high peak power per motor, to reduce the cabling costs, the amount of motors and the costs of the motors per watt,” Salzeder points out.

“Given the ITC extension we are seeing the United States as the first sustainable Solar market for single axis tracking systems within the worldwide market,” Salzeder says. As the leading global technology hub, the United States will be the future center of PV innovation,” Salzeder adds.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.