TE News: Robust, easy-to-install connection assemblies for solar farms

The extended portfolio enhances the customizable trunk solution with added flexibility, adaptability, and easier in-field installation

TE Connectivity (TE), a world leader in connectivity and sensors, brings new insulation piercing connectors to market to further support accelerated solar farm implementation. The Solar IPC (SIPC) assemblies support customers in responding with agility to changes that arise during the solar farm rollout phase and help save time and labor during installation.

Specially engineered and designed for solar use, these robust SIPC assemblies complement TE’s existing Customizable Trunk Solution (CTS) range, further enhancing the flexibility and adaptability of these technologies to customers’ specific needs. 

“These new SIPC assemblies are developed to respond to customer needs for easy, safe, reliable installation and also have the design flexibility to help ensure projects are completed on schedule. Their flexible plug and play setup makes them easier and safer to install as they fit into a wide variety of solar farm architectures. They can be configured in real time to respond to changing on-site needs and their pre-positioned, multi-tap harness reduces the number of field-installed components. They further boost the reliability of our solution range thanks to their durability, and they also help reduce the risk of incorrect installation, for example, by supporting the correct alignment of TAP wires,” explains TE Global Product Manager Daniel Ribeiro.

SIPC assemblies provide protected, insulated and high-quality sealing for fast, easy-to-install, safe and reliable cable connections. They are suitable for both utility scale and commercial solar power generation and have been tested and certified to the highest possible standard cUL9703. They enable a greater number of strings per connection, further optimizing eBOS architecture, like the CTS itself.

This expanded range, which is available now in North America with rollout to other geographies coming later this year, offers the growing solar power generation market the tools, technologies and expertise it needs to further expand. They are also pre-installed with SAFE TE DC protection caps which offer additional advanced protection from bad weather and harsh environments in the field.

CTS can reduce installation time by up to 50% and helps deliver up to 40% in material cost savings. “Where CTS really excels is flexibility: each customer has their own priorities and requirements. Our solutions can respond to this, meaning that every customer gets not just a market-leading solution, but one that is most suited to the specific needs of each project,” Ribeiro says.

The full suite of solar solutions is engineered to the highest standards and designed with the solar farm connectivity requirements in mind.

“Our Solarlok 2.0 connector takes just 15 seconds to implement, this saves valuable installation time on major projects, and in addition to this we have our design engineers, testing experts, and field service technicians to ensure each project runs smoothly,” Ribeiro adds.