You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed Lucy Notarantonio is Newsweek's Senior Lifestyle and Trends Reporter Her focus is trending stories and human interest features ranging from health Lucy joined Newsweek in August 2022 and previously worked at Mercury Press and Media and other UK national newspapers the Australian Women Magazines and The New York Post My focus is human-interest stories ranging from relationships to health I am always on the lookout for relationships that go against the "norm" such as age-gap ones along with incredible weight loss stories aimed to inspire and motivate others Languages: English She is a Derby University graduate You can get in touch with l.notarantonio@newsweek.com either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content a cocker spaniel puppy who will only have his hair dried under one condition He must be curled up on his owner Kylie D'Alencon's lap, receiving gentle pats, as seen in a TikTok video (@thecheekiestgoose) which received more than 2.2 million views The 27-year-old told Newsweek that it became part of their routine following his first bath at around 10 weeks old they have continued to do it every bath time D'Alencon said: "It has now become his routine entertains the idea of drying his hair any other way so we stick to the routine that makes him feel safe." she shared the video captioned: "He hasn't had his first groom yet and I'm scared." There was also text asking how she should tell the groomer about him only liking the blow-dryer when he is cuddled "I'm still looking for a groomer who understands the specific grooming needs of a cocker spaniel," D'Alencon told Newsweek "I'm being very careful to find someone who will meet his needs and keep him comfortable." Newsweek previously spoke to Dr. Preston Turano, a veterinarian and spokesperson at AKC Pet Insurance, about how often you should wash your dog. Turano said that the frequency of bathing a canine depends on its breed Dogs that spend more time indoors need baths only every couple of months while active or working breeds may require more frequent cleaning based on activity levels and weather and minimize allergens that can cause skin issues such as allergic dermatitis It also allows owners to spot potential skin problems Some owners opt against groomers to save money but others may not have the time or simply prefer a professional to do the job While cuddling isn't part of their services saying they would be more than happy to assist Goose's needs "As a groomer 11/10 I LOVE when dogs do this," posted one user and another wrote: "I would love to do that we're on our feet all day; the right groomer would be glad to have some cuddles rather than a dog fighting or biting." I'd give you a discount just for the joy of this interaction." Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair We value your input and encourage you to rate this article Newsletters in your inbox See all La Croix offers an opportunity to discover or rediscover sanctuaries that attract many pilgrims dedicated to the saintly couple Louis and Zélie Martin parents of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus A tour through the town invites visitors to walk in the footsteps of these modern saints from their childhood to their meetings and workplaces the Alençon sanctuary is focused on families lost four of them before they reached the age of reason the Martins resonate with families facing difficulties A new generation of pilgrims in their 30s and 40s still in the early years of marriage and parenthood then we came here to Alençon for a retreat and we had our first child,” they recounted The Normans are parents of four children aged five to ten months they visit the sanctuary every year at the beginning of summer “It's our way of starting the vacation and thanking God “honoring the family in all its realities,” said Grégoire Moreau These retreats are primarily intended for couples hoping for children His motto: “Comfort those who are doing well Margaux and Thibault know the Alençon sanctuary well because “they owe it a lot.” After marrying young their honeymoon didn't last and was clouded over in the months following their union “We just couldn't get along,” said the young woman from Lyon The couple's daily life quickly became strained—he moved in with a friend Margaux went to Alençon and asked the Martin couple for “the grace of marriage.” A year later the couple was doing better and had reunited under the same roof many couples and families come to lay down their personal and professional burdens “Louis and Zélie demonstrated that one could become a saint very simply by honoring family and professional responsibilities without doing great deeds,” continued Guy Fournier Through the importance they placed on hospitality and charity modern examples of a path to holiness within marriage and family life the Martin couple illustrated the possibility of “following the entirety of Christ's life” while remaining entirely in the world They can also reach out to people affected by mental illness as Zélie's writings reveal her struggles with anxiety and depression and Louis ended his life in a psychiatric hospital “The holy spouses Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin practiced Christian service in the family creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus The radiant witness of these new saints inspires us to persevere in joyful service to our brothers and sisters trusting in the help of God and the maternal protection of Mary may they now watch over us and sustain us by their powerful intercession.” Homily by Pope Francis during the canonization of Louis and Zélie Martin in 2015 Today's Alençon lacemakers like Durand learn the process during an apprenticeship that can last up to a decade And while other lace may claim to be Alençon which bears the name of the city where it was born and perfected through thousands of Normandy lacemakers is as inseparable from its place of origin as from its technique the story of this famed French lace begins somewhere else it was then that Venetian embroiderers first gave up their embroidery support and created "punto in aria" (needlepoint in the air) In 1665, King Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the king's finance minister, founded the state-sponsored lace industry in France, explains Michele Majer, professor emerita of fashion and textile history at Bard Graduate Center and co-curator of the center's "Threads of Power" exhibition Louis XIV and Colbert built the lace industry chiefly for economic reasons as they were interested in limiting French nobles from spending their money on Italian and Flemish laces which had been most desirable and fashionable Louis XIV and Colbert created the Manufacture des Points de France and French cities with a strong lace-making tradition welcomed royal workshops with a 10-year supervision by the crown These workshops were the only ones allowed to produce various types of lace "French nobility were forbidden from wearing foreign lace and only state-accredited dealers were permitted to buy French lace," Amelia Soth wrote for JStor Daily "By early 1670s, this type of French needle lace — Alençon — was already being admired for its high quality," Majer says. Referencing the book "Lace: A History" by Santina M Majer explains that sumptuary laws also prohibited what commoners wore at that time and fine fabrics like lace were restricted to royalty only and there was a thriving smuggling of it across borders they had achieved their goal of creating a French lace industry France had begun to set the tone in terms of fashion Alençon was a remarkable lace center with skilled workers — more than 8,000 in the city and its surrounding areas — and the style of Alençon needle lace evolved according to the tastes of queens and empresses Despite its name, the importance and rarity of Alençon lace relates not only to where it is made, but also how it's made. The process includes many stages, according to UNESCO beginning with drawing and pricking the design on parchment the artisan creates an outline of the design and netting and then finally decorates the design and adds relief through embroidering The lace is removed from the parchment with a razor blade Every lace-maker could (and still can) complete every stage of the process Today it takes years to perfect through their a decadelong apprenticeship "In terms of clothing and accessories [Alençon lace] was one of the key signifiers of wealth and status," Majer says It was extremely expensive and time-consuming to make a piece of Alençon lace of the highest quality could take months or up to a year to create Hundreds of years ago, openwork fabrics like Alençon lace occupied an important place in the female and male costumes at the royal court lace was used as an ornament on collars and cuffs Think of the fashion seen in Renaissance paintings But during the second half of the 16th century lace developed as a textile in its own right Women of the 18th century had many opportunities to wear lace Men were more likely to wear lace at the neck as a cravat or as cuffs women began incorporating lace into dresses in the form of flounces which could be removed and put on other dresses In France, following the upheaval of the French Revolution and the unpopularity of the aristocracy, the lace industry declined. But in the early 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged courtiers to wear French needle lace the handmade lace industries of France had made a comeback "Alençon remained one of the very high-end laces," says Majer When machine lace took off in the mid-19th century But a connoisseur could tell the difference between a good machine-made lace and handmade lace so point d'Alençon remained in demand among women of top social status It was even popular among elite women to wear antique point d'Alençon lace from the 17th and 18th centuries it's hard to tell the difference in these textiles But men and women of that era knew what they were looking at the wars and the appearance of machine-made lace marked a slow decline in the production of Alençon lace luxury products no longer held their commercial place in a society that was changing economically and socially a deep attachment to the craft remained and in 1903 the Alençon Chamber of Commerce launched its lace school it was managed by the association La Dentelle au Point d'Alençon and by 1976 the French government committed to safeguarding the lace craft and created the National Alençon Lace Workshop that Durand now heads "Today, we are nine lacemakers within this workshop," she explains. "[Our] primary mission is the conservation of the knowledge of Point d'Alençon lace, through practice, research and transmission." The workshop is attached to the Mobilier National a ministry of culture organization responsible for maintaining French furniture and textiles The nine lacemakers have mastered all 10 steps of making Alençon lace during an apprenticeship that takes from five to 10 years, and in addition to continuing the lacemaking tradition, the workshop sells pieces at the Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle in Alençon Roughly 10 pieces are sold there each year The technique was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010 UNESCO determined that "Alençon needle lace is unusual because of the high level of craftsmanship required and the very long time that it takes to produce (seven hours per square centimeter)." Put another way by Mobilier National a design the size of a postage stamp takes between seven and 15 hours of effort to complete But Durand says true point d'Alençon lace is preserved and protected today because no machine can reproduce its special handmade stitch Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: `;return t.byline_authors_html&&(e+=`By: ${t.byline_authors_html}`),t.byline_authors_html&&t.byline_date_html&&(e+=" | "),t.byline_date_html&&(e+=t.byline_date_html),e+=`\n\t\t\t\t “I still hang on to your Point d’Alençon lace I show it to people and they all say it is pretty so I guess it is The women rave over it so I am sure I got my $47.00 worth even if it is so small you can’t hardly find it.” A U.S. doughboy stationed in France wrote these words to his beloved wife Vera in the waning days of World War I He protected the little piece of lace through his deployment and brought it home to his wife where it remained as a family heirloom for at least the next nine decades The $47 he names would have been a truly hair-raising sum at the time The minuscule scrap of lace was a prize like a gemstone but its basic materials are relatively cheap The value is all in the artistry: a simple line of thread knotted and looped into a snowflake complexity In an age of machine-made textiles, it is hard to recover how precious lace was in the days when each delicate stitch was picked out by hand. But there was a time when lace was as treasured as fine jewelry and scraps of it would be carefully lifted from old articles of clothing and remounted on new ones her sleeves and collar lined with Alençon lace Each postage-stamp-sized square of those delicate flounces demanded a full day’s worth of expert labor The lacemaker bends over the pattern covering the lace with a piece of paper and working only through a tiny peephole snipped through the sheet a razor blade slipped between the layers of cloth sets the lace free The final step has a surrealist twist: the white threads are carefully polished with a lobster claw The early 1600s were marked by a growing obsession with lace amongst Europe’s nobility. This was the era of ornate lace collars. You’ve probably seen them in portraits of the era: the ornate, stiff collars that sit under the chins of the noble sitters, giving them a John the Baptist head-on-a-plate kind of look Anything that expensive tends to create drama. In its heyday, lace smuggling became the stuff of legend. Per the Smithsonian: Stories are told about bodies being replaced by lace in coffins before being shipped across borders dogs being wrapped in lace and covered with a larger hide; hollowed out loaves of bread filled with lace and many other ingenious ways of getting laces to the rich and powerful This setting of international intrigue laid the groundwork for the invention of Alençon lace In the 1660s, the French government became increasingly concerned with the amount of money its nobles were spending on Venetian lace. The finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert hatched a plan to create a homegrown fine lace industry He opened the state coffers to establish schools around the country and poached lacemakers from Venice to teach the local women They are so set in this country upon maintaining their own manufactures that only two days ago there was publicly burnt by the hangman a hundred thousand crowns worth of Point de Venise and other foreign commodities that are forbid as if the foreign laces were criminals condemned to death the local lace schools developed their own sought-after styles The relationship between monarchs and lacemakers was a complicated one Only a small trickle of the vast sums expended on fine lace made its way back to the makers But when the monarchy was abolished in the French Revolution And considering all the hands that went into the making of a single piece of lace Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" Historian Dame Olwen H. Hufton suggests that this loss may have contributed to a growing disenchantment with the Revolution among the lower-class women of the lace-making towns: Families which lost the input into the household economy of a working mother could expect They had no claims upon whatever relief there was to be had Need we be surprised that women were quick to associate the Revolution with increasing immiseration there may even have been an industry-specific response in which specialized work-forces became the earliest critics of the Revolution It wears its mechanical origins proudly; even the traditional wheel motifs at the bottom seem to have mutated into cogs Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today. Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience Alencon’s CUBE system is a PV- and storage-compatible converter with capacity ratings starting from 430 kW From pv magazine USA Alencon Systems has announced the launch of CUBE a new DC:DC converter that is designed for high-voltage applications and can be configured for solar and energy storage applications The CUBE (Combined Universal Buck/Boost Power Electronics) comes in a compact design Alencon said the power density of the CUBE is about five times greater than other non-isolated DC:DC converters in a similar power class The power density is achieved via a silicon carbide-based power train which is currently patent pending in the United States the CUBE is designed and manufactured in the company’s factory in Philadelphia the CUBE provides distributed energy harvesting to increase energy yield for projects using larger central inverters The converter will step up voltage to a central inverter thereby allowing the inverter to operate at greater utilization This enables large-scale PV plants to be built with fewer power blocks The CUBE allows for less copper to be used in the balance of the system by operating at higher voltage and lower current The converter also allows PV facilities to be “storage ready” and can be useful in repowering older PV arrays the CUBE can be used to step up voltage from lower voltage batteries to higher voltage power conversion systems As a result of its high switching frequency the CUBE provides minimal additional fault current contribution to a battery energy storage system “The introduction of the CUBE series of DC:DC converters allows Alencon to offer alternative energy project developers yet another unique tool in an increasingly DC coupled world,” said Hanan Fishman “Alencon has leveraged its decade of expertise in building high power high voltage DC:DC converters with next generation silicon carbide power electronics to deliver a product of unrivaled power density to the market The addition of the CUBE to Alencon’s product line-up is consistent with our mission to become the premier supplier of high power high voltage DC:DC optimizers to the alternative energy industry.” The CUBE joins Alencon’s existing line-up of galvanically isolated The CUBE can be paired with the Alencon BOSS fixed-voltage DC bus solar-plus-storage projects More articles from Brian Publicover Please be mindful of our community standards and website in this browser for the next time I comment By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy This website uses cookies to anonymously count visitor numbers. View our privacy policy. × The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this Close Prediction for readers: DC Microgrids combining technologies such as solar EVs and fuel cells on a common DC bus will go from one off newsworthy projects to more everyday products The increased pace of deployment of such systems will follow the analogy of water swirling down the drain above The only difference is that the funnel of demand for DC Microgrids given the world’s current direction of travel in electrification is virtually limitless If you are not sure what a DC Microgrid even is (no shame in that!) click here to learn more before proceeding There are several factors driving the increased momentum in DC Microgrid adoption and deployment First and foremost are the market forces creating demand for the clean resilient and dispatchable power renewables-based DC Microgrids provide Market demand serves as the gravitational pull in our drain analogy (see Figure 2 below) The enabling factors speeding the rotation of the vortex of DC Microgrid adoption today including a favorable political environment for renewables adoption the continued development of standards around such deployments and quickly maturing software and hardware technologies for use in such projects This confluence of these factors is helping to blossom the fruits of the labors of a number of individuals and organizations who have been working tirelessly at developing the DC Microgrid space for years The balance of this article explains these various factors to help you understand the coming acceleration in the rate of deployment of DC Microgrids the growth of renewables-based DC Microgrids is being driven by energy consumers’ need and desire to have clean electric power that can be delivered continuously regardless of the state of the broader utility grid or the weather Even in advanced economies like the United States our already overtaxed power distribution grid is under greater strain with the electrification of everything a situation only made more difficult by the challenges presented by climate change most readily available and cost-effective source of electric generation is solar Solar is of course an intermittent generator One obvious solution to this challenge is pairing solar with battery energy storage (batteries are both a DC source and a DC load) to turn solar from an intermittent generator into a dispatchable and predictable one the crowded grid has less capacity for new large points of distributed AC grid interconnection along with other localized DC sources like fuel cells and DC loads like EVs behind a single point of grid interconnection a single grid forming inverter (otherwise known as a DC Microgrid) are our best bet for balancing all the conditions above Since you are reading this article on Microgrid Knowledge you have probably heard the saying “If you’ve seen one Microgrid DC Microgrid projects are decidedly bespoke (fancy word for custom) projects as a function of their distributed nature that means soft costs like engineering and design can be a disproportionate One way to reduce these soft costs is through standardization groups like CurrentOS and the Emerge Alliance have come together to write standards for DC Microgrid development the world of DC distribution has a century’s worth of catching up to do with AC distribution hence its contribution to the increased momentum in our water analogy above The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in August of 2022 will funnel billions of dollars into programs supporting clean energy deployment and climate action the IRA “mark[s] the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history.” Bear in mind   Reading through the provisions of the IRA telegraphs the incentives for acceleration of the creation of DC Microgrids of all shapes and sizes including explicitly making provision for investment tax credits for Microgrid projects less than 20 MW with grid interconnections of less than 5 MW DC Microgrids represent a great opportunity to do just this as they allow for significant “DC overbuild” of generation relative to the size of the grid interconnection excess DC solar generation can be diverted directly into battery energy storage for use when that excess generation is not needed and then discharged from the battery when the solar is not available Neither the legislative environment nor the development of standards would be helpful if the technology to support DC Microgrids was not evolving One major area of evolution here is power conversion power conversion has been the domain of inverters (DC to AC converters) or rectifiers (AC to DC converters) With the rapid evolution of the DC Microgrid the DC:DC converter has stepped into the fore of power conversion to serve as the bridge between DC sources and loads interacting in a native DC environment DC converters can come in many sizes and a topologies as one size most assuredly does not fit all we have evolved our product development efforts to assure we are building a comprehensive suite of DC:DC solutions to offer DC Microgrid developers complete solutions to all the nuanced challenges they face in deploying these projects DC:DC converter development is just one piece of the puzzle the other cornerstones of DC systems of course continue to evolve including solar panels and energy storage means The technological evolution is not reserved to the solid state but also to a wide range of software solutions from Microgrid controllers to DC Microgrid design and simulations solutions It’s been said that revolution seldom benefits the revolutionary with the coming increased pace in the deployment of DC Microgrids that hopefully will not be the case in this domain DC Microgrids will likely prove to be the greatest overnight success story that took far longer to achieve thanks to the tireless work of a number of visionary people and organizations that came along the way I am pleased to call a number of these folks my colleagues customers and friends and would like to take a moment some of them including Luis Zubieta and Gary Oppedahl of Emera Technologies Harry Stokman of DC Systems and Current OS Paul Savage and Brian Patterson of the Emerge Alliance OIeg Fishman and the team at Alencon Systems Aleksey Toporkov and Peter Lehn of ARDA Power This is hardly a comprehensive list of people and organizations leading this DC driven evolution but likely a list of names you may never have heard of but will have to thank as the DC Microgrid their resultant benefits become more commonplace An official website of the United States government DOE awarded startup Alencon Systems $3 million to develop a utility-scale inverter system for solar PV plants the company has manufactured its innovative product and is helping grow the domestic solar supply chain Solar Energy Technologies Office startup Alencon Systems $3 million to develop a utility-scale inverter system for solar photovoltaic (PV) plants this company has taken its innovative product to the manufacturing floor and is helping grow the domestic solar supply chain manufacturer in the heating and melting industry when he decided to apply his knowledge of power electronics to help the solar industry He wanted to develop a power electronics system for PV plants that could increase the safety and efficiency of PV systems Alencon developed an innovative direct current (DC-DC) optimizer to increase power generation and built a lab to test it in.  Alencon commercialized the String Power Optimizer and Transmitter (SPOT) and was one of the first companies to bring DC-DC optimizer technology to the market The SPOT converts one level of DC voltage to another level of DC voltage in the main solar collector system steady current to a pulsing current and then back to direct current What makes the SPOT special is that it switches at higher frequency This reduces the size of converter components and minimizes power losses The individual strings may generate at different voltage levels but the SPOT converts the voltage for each PV string and can connect uneven low-voltage strings to a common high-voltage DC bus Controlling each string can maximize power output and improve fault tolerance a technique called galvanic isolation enables system operators to isolate the affected module string to fix it while the rest of the system continues operating The SPOT also provides real-time monitoring data on the PV system’s performance The SPOT can be used in new and existing PV systems When retrofitted to repower older PV systems the SPOT has increased production anywhere from 5% to 15% because it can increase voltage using less copper the SPOT enables power to flow from the PV panels through the DC-DC converter to charge the battery DC coupling requires only one inverter—as opposed to two inverters in alternating current (AC) coupling—to harvest solar energy and charge or discharge the battery Because security is critical as more solar energy is added to the U.S Alencon integrates cybersecurity features in all its products to assure its customers engineering procurement and construction firms and companies that integrate battery energy storage systems for electric-vehicle charging and other uses Today Alencon has more than 50 megawatts of its SPOT technology in operation and has secured funding to continue the company’s growth To keep up with its fast-growing manufacturing business Alencon plans to double its factory size this year The company hopes the expansion will have a domino effect on its U.S improving business for manufacturing suppliers in Michigan and Tennessee; sheet-metal companies in New Jersey and Oklahoma; and printed circuit board assembly shops across the Mid-Atlantic Solar Power World By | August 12 Alencon Systems has announced the launch of the CUBE — its newest line-up of high power high voltage DC:DC converters for alternative energy applications which stands from Combined Universal Buck/Boost Power Electronics The CUBE is available to support both 1,000 and 1,500 V DC:DC applications and is available in two modalities — the CUBE-PV for solar applications and the CUBE-ES for battery energy storage applications The CUBE is unique among other centralized DC:DC converters by offering a level of power density about five-times greater than other non-isolated DC:DC converters in a similar power class The CUBE achieves its unrivaled power density via a silicon carbide-based power train The CUBE is currently patent pending with the United States Patent Office the CUBE is designed and built in the United States in Alencon’s Philadelphia-area factory The CUBE offers alternative energy project developers a number of unique benefits the CUBE-PV provides distributed energy harvesting to increase energy yield for projects using larger central inverters the CUBE will step-up voltage to a central inverter and thus allow the inverter to operate at greater utilization large-scale PV plants can be built with fewer power blocks and thus significantly lower cost by operating at higher voltage and lower current the CUBE-PV allows for less copper to be used in the balance of the system the CUBE-PV allows PV plants to be storage-ready The CUBE-PV can also be a great tool for re-powering older PV arrays cost-effective package for integrating batteries into DC-coupled solar + storage projects The CUBE-ES is an ideal solution for stepping up voltage from lower voltage batteries to higher voltage power conversion systems (PCS) the CUBE provides very little additional fault current contribution to an energy storage system “The introduction of the CUBE series of DC:DC converters allows Alencon to offer alternative energy project developers yet another unique tool in an increasingly DC-coupled world,” said Alencon Systems president Hanan Fishman “Alencon has leveraged its decade of expertise in building high-power high-voltage DC:DC converters with next-generation silicon carbide power electronics to deliver a product of unrivaled power density to the market.” The Alencon CUBE series compliments Alencon’s existing line-up of galvanically isolated the CUBE-PV can be paired with the Alencon BOSS to create cost-effective fixed-voltage DC bus solar + storage projects Kelsey Misbrener is currently managing editor of Solar Power World and has been reporting on policy Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media Privacy Policy | RSS Learn how to describe the purpose of the image (opens in a new tab) Leave empty if the image is purely decorative We're working on a visual shortcode editor until then please follow these instructions Email us to support@plugin.builders for any problems -- This project is inactive --Alencon Systems will develop and commercialize a new type of transformational power electronic technology to utility-scale PV systems based on novel centralized inverter with a capacity of up to 100 megawatts lies at the heart of the Alencon system Feeding this single inverter is an advanced harvesting network that utilizes string-wise maximum power point tracking and high DC voltage (2500 VDC) nodes that are easy to install and maintain Alencon proposes a new type of transformational approach to utility-scale PV systems based on novel centralized inverter with a capacity of up to 100 megawatts (MW) lies at the heart of the Alencon system Feeding this single inverter is an advanced harvesting network that utilizes string-wise maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and high DC voltage nodes that are easy to install and maintain Alencon's proposed approach simplifies the engineering design and reduces costs and losses for large-scale PV systems while increasing their efficiency and yield Their solution will combine the best of both centralized and string inverter systems to achieve a utility-scale solar installation with: Alencon has filed for various patents for technology developed in this project.Final Report By | July 26 Alencon Systems will demonstrate its full line-up of SPOT DC-DC optimizers at SPI 2018 in Anaheim The SPOT family of products includes the SPOT 600 all of which have been listed to UL1741 as well as CSA C22.2 and IEC 62109-1 for the Canadian and other overseas markets respectively true 1500-volt PV string level DC-DC optimizer to receive UL listing The Alencon SPOT family of DC-DC optimizers is a unique solution for combining solar+storage repowering aged PV systems and building more cost-effective microgrids “The SPOT helps solve some of the most pressing challenges in the commercial and utility scale sectors of the solar today including the ability to cost effectively combine Solar and Storage maintain the viability of aged PV plants and facilitate the deployment of more rugged and efficient Microgrids,” explains Alencon Systems’ president Hanan Fishman The Alencon SPOT family of products allows for the cost-effective integration of solar+storage on the DC side of the inverter by mapping the voltage from the PV panels to that of the charge/discharge voltage of the batteries This approach allows new solar+storage projects to be built more cost effectively while also letting existing PV plant owners add storage without having to change their grid interconnect agreement Alencon’s SPOT is able effectively DC-couple solar+storage with its patented galvanic isolation approach to voltage manipulation of input voltage relative to output voltage the Alencon SPOT 1500 was deployed in the largest of its kind to date DC-coupled solar+storage project with a major energy company in the Southeastern United States The Alencon SPOT family of products can be a great tool for improving the performance and the extending the life of existing PV plants The SPOT can easily be retrofitted into an existing PV plant with a minimal amount of effort relative to the benefit The SPOT is fully compatible on a “plug and play” basis with virtually any third-party inverter including those from such leading suppliers as SMA The SPOT can increase energy yield of aged solar plants suffering from PV panel mismatch due to any combination of factors including shading module failure and replacement or uneven degradation The SPOT is able to do so by injecting granular string level maximum power point tracking (MPPT) into plants that previously were only served by a single MPPT from a central inverter The Alencon SPOT can be a particularly unique solution for facilitating the replacement of failed inverters particularly in PV plants with 600-volt strings where 600-volt inverters are no longer available as replacements the SPOT is a great solution for bridging the voltage gap created gap between 600-volt PV strings and new 1000 or 1500-volt inverters The Alencon SPOT family of products can serve as vital appliance to the next generation of resilient microgrids which incorporate solar and other forms of alternative generation configurable DC-bus voltage from PV panels of any voltage This DC-bus voltage can the be distributed to any number of loads in the Microgrid PA-based Alencon has begun distribution of its String Power Optimizer which it calls “the PV industry’s most powerful and versatile DC-DC optimizer for large commercial and utility scale applications.” retrofits with the latest optimizer can “can improve the yield of PV plants from anywhere from five percent to 10 percent on average.” While the product is as useful for new plants as retrofits the company is targeting fiver-year-old PV plants for the bulk of its sales “Many investors expect to flip a PV project after five years,” he adds their energy production and performance ratios can wane for a variety of factors including soiling and module degradation among others” says Fishman The SPOT optimizer is designed to boost the functionality of PV plants ranging from 250kW up to 10 MW The latest SPOT has a NEMA4 enclosure recast to make it more rugged yet lighter weight and thus easier to install “The 25 KW unit allows maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to be performed on four PV strings at once twice as many as any similar device on the market today,” he says Alencon’s SPOT provides complete galvanic isolation between PV strings and the inverter This feature makes the SPOT useful in O&M because any arc or ground faults that occur with a PV string can be isolated from the rest of the solar system arc and ground faults can be quickly traced to the exact PV string where they are occurring which means maintenance can be more efficiently deployed and repairs can be safely done on one string while the rest of the PV plant continues to produce power SPOT allows for a broad range of both input and output voltages so it can be deployed to improve the performance of any PV plant the SPOT is able to markedly reduce conduction losses by feeding a central inverter fixed voltage the SPOT will allow a central inverter to run much more efficiently by providing it the level of voltage that allows it to perform at its highest rated efficiency “The SPOT is an Internet-of-Things (IoT) ready device the SPOT allows PV plant owners to assure their assets are operating at peak performance,” says Fishman As plants are prepared for resale by investors calculation of the current value of the plant is a key consideration so that upgrades like the SPOT optimizer can contribute to future revenue “PV plant retrofits can qualify for the ITC but requires a forensic accountant to get involved,” Fishman notes Alencon was selected earlier this year to join the recently formed Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) Operations & Maintenance (O&M) Working Group “to help O&M companies meet the challenges of generating energy from aging PV assets,” Fishman says More articles from Charles W. Thurston Please be mindful of our community standards pv magazine USA offers daily updates of the latest photovoltaics news We also offer comprehensive global coverage of the most important solar markets worldwide up to date information delivered straight to your inbox Welcome to pv magazine USA. This site uses cookies. Read our policy. × Alencon’s silicon carbide-based SPOT allows for repowering solar power plants that need to replace 600V inverters with newer 1000V/1500V gear or for those that wish to maximize electricity generation at ageing and imperfect facilities with creative engineering techniques pv magazine USA spoke with Alencon Systems President Hanan Fishman to learn more about what it means to repower a solar power plant There are two main reasons to repower a solar power system – “need versus greed.” The need to repower is increasingly arising as inverters meet their end-of-life and comparable 600-volt hardware no longer exists Alencon’s String Power Optimizers and Transmitters (SPOTs) take voltages at one value and output them at exactly what the new hardware requires The above image shows a simplified repowering due to need The facility needed to replace its inverters that were taking in 600-volt solar module strings The area within the dotted red lines represents hardware that replaced the old – and it started with Alencon’s SPOT taking in the 600Vdc solar module strings and outputting them at 1000Vdc These outputs were wired into new Solectria combiners which then pushed the electricity to new Solectria 1000-Volt inverters The wiring diagrams below of an example facility show the organized complexity of a large rewiring The lower half of the drawing shows the new solar module strings coming into Alencon’s SPOT while the top half notes the existing wiring that didn’t have to be changed Fishman noted that the cost of the SPOT hardware is only one aspect of the broader work needed to be done to repower a site And for repowering to be viable — it has to be done economically The company has a spreadsheet that looks a lot like a standard solar power facility return-on-investment calculator the version pv magazine USA reviewed (excerpted below) focuses on the cost of new hardware and the increase in output Here we start to learn a bit more about the greed of upgrading facilities. If we know the hard math it’ll cost to switch out new hardware, and there exists improved hardware (such as better trackers or bifacial modules) that can increase the generation of a site – at what financial moment does the upgrade make sense The answer comes from a combination of factors which include the amount of new generation the rate the site is paid for said generation the challenge of getting a new interconnection agreement the human labor costs of moving around gear – something that Alencon says needs as much focus to gain cost effectiveness during engineering processes designing the installation of its hardware All these variables are very similar to the original spreadsheet models of solar power projects And we’re going to have to work with already deployed hardware in a different fashion – repowering or repairing sites as required or desired Stay tuned for coverage of Alencon’s BOSS  product – because DC-coupled energy storage is how many future plants will be operated More articles from John Fitzgerald Weaver We are aluminium profile manufacturer in Mumbai most of our projects are based on customized profiles If need then please send us drawing or reference picture so we can send you the Feasibility & Estimation it seems like the electric utility industry has taken the next step into the non-fueled generation future getting higher voltage inverters with more energy efficiency technology can save money and generate more power with small CIP upgrades With the bifacial solar PV ‘wave’ expected to hit this year and next online solar PV farms may just find replacing solar PV strings with bifacial panels will increase the power plant’s yield and profits with the same foot print Amortization periods should be 1/4 or less than the current multi-decade fueled generation facilities the technology allows the solar PV or wind generation owner to actually add production generation without buying new property re-engineering the entire plant or “decommissioning” and building another plant to increase output Just replace old equipment with the latest/greatest technology using CIP of the plant operations The actual demand and response can be tailored to the area of service If one needs more power generated for a longer period of time Take half of the solar PV strings and replace them with bifacial solar PV and single axis trackers Replace in strings over a period of months or years to get the biggest bang for the buck A new white paper by Alencon outlines the differences between PV-centric and battery-centric coupling From pv magazine USA Anyone installing a distributed solar+storage system has to make a decision on how to couple the solar side with the energy storage side. Alencon has published a new white paper comparing the two main DC coupling approaches to combining solar and storage DC coupling describes a layout in which the solar array and battery share the same inverter with configurations described by Alencon as “PV-centric” and “battery-centric.” PV-centric coupling is when a unidirectional DC:DC converter is installed between the PV panels and a DC bus that connects a battery energy storage system with an inverter the power flows from the PV panels in one direction through the DC:DC converter to directly charge a battery energy storage system it is the job of the DC optimizer to optimally harvest solar energy by way of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) Battery-centric coupling is where the DC:DC converter is installed between the battery racks and a DC bus connected to an inverter while the inverter is connected directly to the PV system power flows through one of Alencon’s optimizer products in a bidirectional manner to charge and discharge the battery while the inverter harvests power from the PV array While Alencon says a battery-centric approach appears to be the more valuable of the two at face value PV-centric has some distinct advantages in specific scenarios One of these scenarios comes from projects using a bidirectional battery storage inverter opening up the ability of the solar+storage system to benefit from more revenue streams through the use of the bidirectional inverter this configuration can be useful for campus-wide installations where arrays are highly distributed over a confined area MPPTs distributed across the PV array can help to significantly increase PV yield the PV-centric model shines in instances of maximizing DC overbuilds As it becomes more economical to overbuild projects and add storage for the energy that would otherwise be clipped “facilitates larger DC ratios than a typical PV inverter would allow by allowing more granular control and curtailment of PV production during edge-case scenarios when the battery is full and the PV is overproducing.” The battery-centric approach is more about cost-effectiveness the power rating of the PV array is typically much higher than the power rating of the battery When sizing power electronics like DC:DC converters the number of devices needed is determined by the power rating of storage meaning that if the power electronics are sized to the power rating of the battery – the battery-centric approach will be more cost effective More articles from Tim Sylvia Texture files only for the freeware C150 by FrenchVFR Screenshot of Alencon Cessna C150 on the ground View important Copyright © information related to freeware files here The archive c-150_alencon.zip has 24 files and directories contained within it This list displays the first 500 files in the package Signing-up for PRO gives you super fast, unrestricted speed to the thousands of MSFS, FSX, P3D & X-Plane downloads which include aircraft, scenery, and more - click here to view the library for free or.. Sign-Up Now PRO membership payments go directly back into the website to pay for hosting, bandwidth, and development costs. It's what also enables us to offer a free download tier. Join over 145,000 subscribers of our free dedicated flight simulation newsletter. Featuring new add-ons, products and industry news. Are you using the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 release? Text description provided by the architects. Situated on the edge of Alençon, in the rural landscape of Lower Normandy, La Luciole – French for «firefly» – resulted from the efforts of its passionate director-«programmateur». Founded in 1994, this concert facility has carved itself a reputation, attracting renowned musicians to its tiny performance hall. Several years ago, the municipality has agreed to finance the extension of La Luciole. The competition brief required a larger, 650-strong concert hall that would however maintain the sense of intimacy and the enveloping quality that defined the original space. The desire to bring people maximally close to the stage has literally shaped the restructured venue wherein artists are almost surrounded by their audience. SectionBuilt by the west entrance to the city set in counterpoint to the linear façade of the adjacent exhibition centre The membrane stretched over the auditoriumʼs circular roof is meant as a projection screen Exterior finishing relates the building to its natural surroundings The initial project proposed matt and polished stainless steel cladding that would reflect the ever-changing Normandy skies yet the reality dictated a more economical solution: corrugated steel siding Seemingly random arrangement of white and blue panels suggests a pixilated fragment of the sky With darker shades concentrated where the two cylinders meet the overall effect evokes a geyser linking the earth and the sky You'll now receive updates based on what you follow Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors If you have done all of this and still can't find the email Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Man said to have shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before barricading himself in room for family visits I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Elite officers used stun grenades to capture the prisoner after he stabbed security staff with a ceramic knife before barricading himself in a room used for family visits. The man reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest] as he launched the attack while his wife was visiting the Normandy prison on Tuesday, prison officials were quoted as saying. Nicolas Castaner, the French interior minister, confirmed the prisoner and his wife had been detained by officers. Nicole Belloubet, the justice minister, said she understood the prisoner was on a security agencies' watch list of potential threats because of his suspected Islamist sympathies. She said: “There is no doubt about the terrorist nature of this attack.” The minister added that one of the guards had been seriously injured. The inmate at the centre of the attack was serving a 30-year sentence for murder, armed robbery, kidnapping and publicly condoning terrorism at the prison in Conde-sur-Sarthe, roughly half way between Caen and Le Mans. He was jailed in 2015 for the offences, which included the murder of an 89-year-old man who had survived Nazi concentration camps. French media reported the inmate as being known as a radicalised Islamist. An investigation has been launched to find out how the prisoner got hold of a knife and whether his wife was involved. 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