Renewable energy + industrial sustainability
Dynamic control of industrial solar plants and energy storage Spanish Group Power Electronics has demonstrated its comprehensive expertise in sustainable energy supply in over 3 000 solar and energy storage projects with a total installed capacity of 120 GW. To control its modular systems, the company relies on open, high-performance Beckho control technology: powerful embedded PCs combined with TwinCAT enable flexible scaling and dynamic load changes of 330 MW within 110 ms. Stefan Ziegler of Beckho Automation reports on this application. B ased in Llíria near Valencia, Power Electronics specialises in inverters for utility and battery storage systems and is a leading manufacturer of solar inverters for photovoltaic systems around the world. Founded in 1987, the company is represented in 36 countries and has implemented more than 3 000 solar and energy storage projects with 120 GW of installed capacity (ac), preventing the release of almost
120 million tonnes of CO 2 . In addition to the production of solar, battery, and hybrid inverters, Power Electronics supplies its own control system for plants – with the battery controller interface (BCI) and power plant controller (PPC) as core elements. A plant consists of many in- dividual power blocks with solar and/or battery modules, each of which is monitored and con- trolled by a BCI that uses PC- based control. A power block contains an inverter for the solar modules and – if battery storage is also used – a dc/dc converter. The inverter converts the direct voltage of the solar modules into alternating voltage to supply either the grid or the batteries bidirectionally, depending on de- mand. The central PPC is respon- sible for the higher-level control and coordination of all power blocks in a plant according to the grid operator’s requirements. Higher economic e iciency through dynamic control With its decades of expertise, the company complies with the demanding energy supplier regulations which vary around the world and, among other things, define how plants need to behave in order to ensure the stability of energy grids during certain events. “If a plant also meets even stricter requirements in terms of response times, it can provide what are known as
CX2033 Embedded PCs with AMD Ryzen™ processors are used for the power plant controllers (PPCs) and the individual power blocks are controlled via TwinCAT and ADS.
12 Electricity + Control MARCH 2026
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