Astro-E was established in Jan. 2022. The technology of the company is supported by the Institute of Electrical Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the R&D team members are all from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Several technologies of the company have independent intellectual property rights, and it is committed to promoting the development of a new energy industry in China and the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of carbon emission reduction. The main products of the company are the smart micro photovoltaic power manager and flexible thin-film solar cells. Products are oriented to high-end new energy markets such as distributed photovoltaic, building energy-saving power generation, electric vehicles, mobile energy, and aerospace, etc.
 
Under the status of global carbon neutrality and energy shortage, the transformation of the energy structure is accelerating and the advantages of distributed photovoltaic which is not limited by land resources and low transmission cost are gradually highlighted. Thus, the newly installed capacity and proportion of distributed photovoltaic are increasing. 
 
Liu Xiangxin, Founder of Astro-E, is a head expert in the field of CdTe solar cells and has more than 20 years of industry R&D experience. Astro-E has developed the only domestic micro-inverter (power manager) which is specialized in various thin-film solar cell modules. The first-generation microinverter TM-LV2000MI and other products suitable for silicon solar cell modules will be put on the market in early 2023.
 
In addition, the core equipment of CdTe solar cell production independently developed by Astro-E will solve the bottleneck problem in the field of large-scale production of thin-film photovoltaic and form the first flexible CdTe solar cell rapid coating production equipment in China, breaking through the technological monopoly of the United States in this field.
 

(Astro-E Smart Micro-inverter)

 
With the development of the distributed photovoltaic market, especially the BIPV market, more and more photovoltaic systems will be equipped on roofs, which is also the main application scenario of the micro-inverter. However, with the rapid increase of installed capacity, there are also many pain points in the market, such as the inevitable shadow blocking problem, the potential safety hazard caused by DC high voltage, the low power generation income caused by the buckets effect, and the difficulty of operation and maintenance.
 
Therefore, Astro-E has made some innovations in the micro-inverter’s hardware and software. In terms of hardware, Astro-E adopts a self-developed new DC boost circuit topology and is equipped with third-generation semiconductor devices to reduce product volume. In addition, the progress of its packaging production technology has an IP67 protection grade, and its service life is about 2-3 times that of the series inverter, and its design service life is as long as 25 years, which is consistent with the service life of components. In terms of software, Astro-E adopts a new control algorithm, which improves the speed accordingly, and is more suitable for BIPV application scenarios. Based on this, the micro-inverter has stronger adaptability, a smaller volume, and higher power.
 
On the safety issue, the Astro-E micro-inverter is connected to the photovoltaic system in a parallel, which makes the DC side of the system stable at about 40V, thus fundamentally eliminating the fire hazard and electric shock risk caused by arc ignition. Even if the micro-inverter system is in an emergency due to external factors, after shutting down the system, the rescuers will not face the risk of electric shock because there is no DC high voltage in the photovoltaic power station.
 
Secondly, aiming to tackle the "buckets effect", the assembly-level MPPT controller of Astro-E micro-inverter can track the maximum power point of each photovoltaic module separately. Even if the operation efficiency of a photovoltaic module is powerless, it will not affect other photovoltaic modules. For example, in the whole photovoltaic system, if some assemblies are damaged or blocked, the MPPT controllers of other assemblies will still keep their highest conversion efficiency.
 
In addition, the Astro-E micro-inverter has its own assembly-level monitoring system, which can monitor the information of assembly-level voltage, current, power, etc., making it convenient for customers to remotely and real-time monitor the power generation status of each assembly. No matter which assembly, connecting wire, or connecting terminal in any corner of the world has problems, the fault point, and fault type can be easily located through the monitoring platform, providing accurate data reference for customers' operation and maintenance. 
 
As the leading investor, the head of the investment business of CAS Venture Capital said: "The installed capacity of photovoltaic power generation in the world continues to grow steadily. As an important part of the power generation system, the demand for photovoltaic inverters will continue to expand in the future, and they will be smaller, safer, and more functional. Astro-E has a deep scientific research foundation of thin-film cells and R&D experience in power electronics technology and is extremely sensitive to the adaptability of market demand in the future. We are very optimistic about its development prospects. "
 
Allen Yu, Executive Director of AGF, said: "Astro-E is an important layout of AGF in the field of green investment. We are optimistic about the application of distributed photovoltaics in many emerging scenarios like the construction industry and automobile field under the dual-carbon target, and highly recognize the product value and technical barriers of Astro-E’s smart micro-inverter and CdTe thin-film cells. It is expected that Astro-E can quickly fill the supply vacancy and continue to help the development of the photovoltaic industry and green buildings in China through the innovation of materials and technologies. "