Utility-scale solar is evolving. As the industry moves toward more integrated, intelligent power plants, the way the electrical balance of system (eBOS) is designed—and when it’s designed—is a crucial consideration, says Ryan Schofield, VP of Electrical – eBOS, at Nextpower.
Schofield has had a rare vantage point of eBOS across the full project lifecycle. He began his career in 2011 on the warehouse floor of a small combiner box manufacturer, learning the fundamentals of eBOS from the ground up—assembling units, understanding components, and seeing firsthand how products come together. Over the next decade, he moved through purchasing, project management and operations, eventually leading the company’s solar products division. He later joined a well-respected North American EPC contractor with a mandate to build an eBOS manufacturing business from scratch.
Listen: Ryan Schofield discusses early eBOS integration with SunCast Media.
From manufacturing to system design to installation, Schofield has seen not just where eBOS creates risk, but where it can unlock value. Today, at Nextpower, Schofield is focused on rethinking eBOS as part of a solutions-focused, fully integrated system that brings electrical infrastructure into the design process earlier and enables a more co-designed solar plant architecture.
In this Q&A, Schofield explains the pain points and crucial decisions in utility-scale eBOS, and how a more integrated, system-level mindset can reshape how solar projects are designed, built, and operated.
Q: You have such a varied background in eBOS—what drew you to Nextpower?
Ryan Schofield: The Nextpower expansion into eBOS came at the perfect time for me. In 2025, after helping to build up a new eBOS manufacturing business, I was looking for an opportunity to take that experience further. When Nextpower acquired Bentek, I saw the chance to elevate eBOS in utility-scale solar by moving it from a standalone product category selected late in the process to an integral piece of a fully integrated system design—and the chance to do that at a global scale.
Q: Given your POV of eBOS from the manufacturer side and the EPC side, what pain points have been overlooked traditionally?
Ryan Schofield: Everyone in the value chain—developers, EPCs, owners—is trying to achieve the same thing: a system that’s reliable, safe, easy to install, and delivered on time. They don’t want to deal with rework, delays, or finger-pointing between suppliers.
On a typical project, 1 MW can mean hundreds of connection points. At utility scale, that translates to hundreds of thousands of individual electrical connections that all need to be installed correctly and perform reliably over time.
The consequences of mistakes can be significant, especially on a project schedule. If there’s a design error and you need additional material, you’re typically looking at a delay of at least several weeks, and often longer, depending on manufacturing capacity and supply chain conditions. That can disrupt the entire downstream construction sequence.
Most of the pain points come back to generally treating eBOS as a smaller line item that can be figured out later. When issues arise late in the process, whether it’s design misalignment, missing components, or installation challenges, they’re often accepted as part of the job. Small design decisions, like string lengths or component selection, can have ripple effects on cost, schedules, constructability, and performance.
We’re trying to shift that mindset from reactive problem-solving to proactive system design. If you address these challenges upfront, or enable a co-design of structural and electrical, you can avoid a lot of those downstream impacts entirely.
Q: What advancements have been made in Nextpower eBOS since the initial acquisition?
Ryan Schofield: We have launched the proprietary NX PowerMerge™ trunk connector, but we’re not pushing a single approach; we’re designing the right system for each project. We’re especially focused on being a solutions-focused eBOS provider.
That’s important to note because at Nextpower, being a leader in trackers, we have the opportunity to directly address the long-standing challenges that come from integrating eBOS later in the design process.
Getting access to the tracker data earlier in the design phase makes a huge difference for eBOS design. And because we have this solutions-focused product portfolio, we can select the right collection architecture, whether that’s trunk bus, combiners, or accommodating multiple module types, based on the specific needs of the project.
Q: How does integrating eBOS with trackers at the outset change the way projects are designed, procured, and executed?
Ryan Schofield: The tracker is the backbone of the project. It defines layout, stringing, and equipment placement. When the eBOS team has access to that data early, it unlocks a much smarter system design. Instead of evaluating every possible option late in the process, you can focus early on the solutions that actually make sense for that project.
Even something like foundation selection tells you a lot. If the site requires NX Earth Truss™ foundations because the soil is rocky, that immediately tells you certain underground collection approaches for eBOS may be less attractive. That starts narrowing your options before you’re deep into electrical design.
That mindset comes from seeing how a highly effective EPC is operated. Before an EPC signs a contract, every team reviews the project across estimating, engineering, field execution, and supply chain so that everyone is aligned on the assumptions. I’ve tried to bring that same discipline here. As an industry, we need to work toward building the project as an integrated power plant system from the start.
Pictured: Nextpower Harnessing Solutions
Q: Do you have an example that shows the impact of early-stage eBOS discussions?
Ryan Schofield: We’ve had situations where a customer came in needing to close a budget gap, and instead of just looking at eBOS in isolation, we went back and reworked the broader system design. By considering tracker layout, foundations, and eBOS together, we were able to identify changes — changing row configuration, shortening harness lengths — that reduced material requirements, costs, and improved the overall design.
The customer was looking for a relatively small savings opportunity, and the integrated redesign ended up delivering significantly more than that.
Q: How should developers and EPCs think about the choice between combiner-based and trunk-based architectures?
Ryan Schofield: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer for every project. You have to think about it as a matrix: site conditions, climate, soil type, module configuration, commissioning practices, installation preferences, labor availability, and the experience level of the crews. Regionality plays a big part too. What works best in a hot, sandy environment like Texas might not be the best approach in a region that is colder and rocky.
A combiner-based system means you have an enclosure with fuses and a disconnect, and both of those generate heat. When that equipment is sitting in direct sun in high ambient temperatures, the internal temperature rises significantly. That can force you to derate components, which means you may not be optimizing the system the way you intended.
Learn more about NX Combiner Systems.
A trunk-based approach can reduce some of that heat concentration by moving the fusing into the harnessing and limiting what sits inside the box, which makes a real difference in hotter climates. But then you have to factor in conductor sizing and installation approach. You can push a smaller cable harder, but it will run hotter. If you upsize the cable, it runs cooler, but cost goes up. If you bury cable for open-row access, that may improve operations, but it adds material and installation cost.
Learn more about trunk systems with NX PowerMerge.
So, you can see what I mean by the matrix of options for each project. This is where moving the industry toward early integration and co-engineering will become really valuable. You can start to make those decisions with full context, rather than trying to adapt later.
Q: How should EPCs think about the decision between field-installed and factory-installed trunk bus solutions?
Ryan Schofield: There are pros and cons to both approaches, and a lot of customer preference comes down to prior experience.
Many of the original field-installed IPC products deployed in the industry weren’t originally developed for PV applications. Over time, those product designs improved to better guide the wire, reduce installer variability, and improve consistency.
The value of a field-installed trunk bus connector solution is flexibility. If a factory-installed molded drop is fixed in one location, that’s where it has to be. But as we’ve discussed, projects rarely go in exactly as designed. Piles may be slightly off, spacing may shift, and small tolerances can add up across a large site. A field-installed approach gives the installer more ability to adapt and keep the system aligned.
The trade-off with field-installed trunk connectors is that you introduce workmanship as a variable. For us, the question becomes: how do you design a field-installed product that is as simple, reliable, and installer-friendly as possible? Again, it comes back to designing the right system for the project and not forcing a single installation philosophy.
Q: What is different about the NX PowerMerge trunk connector?
Ryan Schofield: The NX PowerMerge trunk connector continues the evolution of the product category with a best-of-both-worlds approach between field- and factory-installed. With NX PowerMerge, we have premolded and tested the tap-side connections in the factory, while still giving the installer flexibility on the trunk line in the field. In the field, the connection to the trunk cable is done with a compression method that improves reliability.
It doesn’t eliminate the need for good installation practices, but it reduces the number of critical field decisions while still giving installers flexibility. That is something that becomes increasingly important at scale. In the end, the customer gets some of that confidence of a factory-built solution, but you also maintain installation flexibility where it matters.
Q: Can robotic inspection services help further reduce installation-related errors and risk?
Ryan Schofield: Absolutely! I think tools like the NX Ranger™ robotic service can be incredibly valuable for quality assurance for eBOS and every other component installed or connected under the panel.
At the end of the day, all of these systems are being installed by people, and people make mistakes. Connections may look correct visually, but that doesn’t always mean they’re fully mated, properly torqued, or installed exactly as intended.
That’s where a second layer of inspection becomes powerful. If you can scan the site and identify issues before the system is energized, you can prevent failures like overheating and melted connectors.
And as labor becomes more constrained and crews become more mixed in experience, the value of automated QA/QC only grows. Let technology help catch what the human eye might miss.
Q: Looking ahead, what do you see as the most meaningful innovation in eBOS technology?
Ryan Schofield: To me, innovation in eBOS isn’t just about introducing new products or ways to install, but it’s about using system-level thinking to optimize the whole project.
We need to start thinking about designing solar systems as integrated power plants and building solar arrays more like assembly systems versus a construction site made up of disconnected parts. At scale, that means reducing variability across hundreds of thousands of connections and designing systems that can be installed consistently in real-world conditions.
For eBOS teams, this should mean no longer waiting for a design package and having to respond to it. But this also means eBOS manufacturers becoming solutions-providers. No project is one-size-fits-all when it comes to eBOS. We should be acting as partners, helping customers think through what works, what doesn’t, and where risk may exist before the project reaches the field. That’s how eBOS moves from a component to a system, and from a cost center to a competitive advantage — early design, co-engineering, and a truly integrated, solutions-focused approach.