• Please describe your role at Antai and your expertise in the sector?

Antaisolar is one of the globally reputed leading suppliers of Solar Tracker solutions, fixed and seasonal tilt mounting structures for utility-scale projects, and as well as a solutions provider for all kinds of racking systems for residential, commercial, and industrial roofs. Antaisolar was established in 2006 and it has already got more than 15 years of brand history in the Solar Industry. Over the years of a deep understanding and knowledge of the Solar Industry and its trend, Antaisolar has been keeping developing high yield generating, cost-optimized, durable, and compatible tracker and racking products for solar power projects. With our strong global presence, extended local content, and warehouse services, we have shipped more than 19.5 GW globally as of today.

I am leading teams in Asian, Middle-Eastern, and African regions for business development and our products and services solutions for Solar Power Projects within these regions.

• How did your story in solar begin and in your opinion, how much has it changed since then, if at all? Any particular story or reason you would like to share about joining this field?

There are lots of reasons to be in the Solar Industry, first of all, it’s a Green Energy, not complicated technology as other power generation technologies even within the renewables energy, no fuel cost can be installed anywhere, short construction period and low maintenance cost are its beauty. I started my solar industry journey in mid of 2009. I was more focused on utility-scale solar power project development, project financing, and turn-key solutions (EPC) providers. 

At that time, poly-silicon and other material costs were very high, especially for PV modules production. Even monocrystalline silicon regards as an advanced technology in PV modules at a higher price. Moreover, solar power plant requires an up-front investment, and due to the high CAPEX (Higher LCOE) and financing institutes and investors had little concern about the technology’s bankability at that time, so the development of solar power project was dependent on the country’s renewable policies and incentives.

For solar power generation, there was and is always a challenge remaining to be solved, how to generate high energy by using minimum land area and least DC capacity (CAPEX)? Thanks to the latest technologies, innovation, and competition, the price of PV modules has significantly dropped over a decade. We can see incremental innovation in solar PV modules, like Bi-facial modules, N-type modules, etc., and the most important architectural innovation on mounting structure/racking system, the Solar Tracking system, which is getting more and more popular in utility-scale projects. 

In 1995 efficiency of PV technology was around 12.5%, nowadays we can find more or less 21% efficiency modules in the market. Whereas, Single-axis Solar Tracker can increase the generation of electricity by 15% – 30% of the Solar Power Plant than using fixed mounting systems. Solar Tracker has played a substantial role to lower the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE). Nowadays, LCoE of the solar power projects is even below than grid-parity in many countries around the world. Using Solar Trackers, the world is getting one of the lowest prices for a unit of electricity and at the same time saving the earth. What could be a better reason than this one, right?

• What is a unique selling proposition about the products provided by Antai Solar?

Day-by-day higher wattage modules are coming into the market, latest N-type modules of 600 – 690 W shall be released by the end of this year or maybe even the higher rated modules might be released from most of the Tier-1 PV module manufacturers. The higher wattage rated modules means, bigger in size and heavier. In traditional single-point drive tracker, it has a low working wind speed and low maximum wind speed. The multi-drive point system of Antai’s 1P and 2P trackers shall help to maintain the proper working wind speed. That is the reason, we are providing a multi-drive point system in our Tai Space (1P) and Tai Universal (2P) trackers. With this system, the tracker will have higher stiffness, better stability, and stow at a lower tilt angle. This will help to lower the panel pressure, lower overall tracker cost, and increase the operational life span with more power generation. Moreover, we are offering an integrated robotic PV array cleaning system as well.

Besides that, we have more than six production bases in different countries to solve the problem of the highest logistic cost these days due to the COVID and provide the local content up to 80% in our Tacker in major markets to align and reach an EPC contractor’s local content goals.

• What could you tell us about your sector and company’s growth opportunities in the region?

We are very optimistic about the market growth and opportunity for us in the region. As we can see the power generation technologies trend has been changing from traditional power generation technologies to solar (PV) power generation and small scale to utility-scale projects. Our strategy of competitive, compatible, and localized Tracker solutions shall well fit in the region and we foresee long-term steady growth for our company in the region.