Economic Efficiency is the Top Priority in Solar Production

VAT can draw a positive balance of its SNEC participation this year despite the imposed visitor regulations for foreign participants. For example, the VAT China team observes that the strong focus on initial investment costs for valve technology in previous years is gradually giving way to a stronger consideration of total lifecycle costs. "Visitors, especially end users, are showing more interest in learning how we guarantee high availability and reduce maintenance." Jacky Xia reports from his conversations at the booth. "In general, we also keep getting questions about how we ensure process stability especially of our transfer valves over longer production cycles." For example, strong thermal fluctuations can lead to process chamber deformation, which can have a negative impact on the sealing performance of the transfer valves. Problems to which VAT offers an answer in its current portfolio.

In addition to current valve technology, the area of retrofitting is also gaining increasing interest. Not only regular maintenance guarantees high productivity, but also targeted retrofitting can bring relevant economic advantages for an ongoing production. With its growing Upgrade & Retrofit program, VAT offers solutions for this area as well. As a special product for the service sector, VAT also introduced its new Fixed-Price Refurbishment service at SNEC. As an alternative to a risky "run to failure" strategy, it offers the possibility to get a guaranteed quality of results at reduced risk at a fixed cost.

The 15th SNEC International Photovolatic Power Generation and Smart Energy Conference & Exhibition was held this year, as last year, in Shanghai at the Shanghai New Int'l Expo Center.