The Solar Inverter Industry The Solar Inverter Industry has remained relatively stable compared to the solar panel industry due to fewer number of players and higher barriers of entry. The top solar inverter companies are mostly European though Asian companies particularly from China are making aggressive expansion plans. The solar inverter industry is expected to […]
Japanese Solar Inverters While Japanese solar panel companies are sweating due to cheap Asian solar panel imports, the solar inverter companies in Japan are facing the happy problem of supply shortages. The reason is that the Japan requires that PV inverters be certified by Japan Electrical Safety & Environment Technology Laboratories (JET). Most of the […]
SMA Solar The stock price of the company has touched new lows, as investors are anticipating that the company will be unable to face the onslaught of the Chinese solar inverter manufacturers. Note SMA Solar held a dominating 40% solar inverter global marketshare in 2010, compared to the solar panel manufacturers, none of which has […]
Photovoltaic Inverter or Solar Inverters as they are better known as have become one of the fastest growing segment in power electronics. The ~$2.1 billion market in 2009 with 7 GW of installations has increased by more than 130% to around $5 billion in 2010 as the solar panel demand globally increased to around 17 GW.Note Solar Inverter Companies have done much better as competition is much lower and the annual price declines in solar inverters has been much lower at around 10% compared to the 50% decline in solar panel in the last 2-3 years.Photovoltaic inverters are not being manufactured by hundreds of suppliers around the world though the top 5 solar inverter manufacturers control almost 75-80% of the market.The reason is that solar inverters have a high technology barrier when it comes to making highly efficient and reliable solar inverters.Till now Chinese manufacturers have not been able to significantly penetrate this solar inverter market because of this.In comparision Chinese solar module producers have captured more than 50% of the global solar market through cutthroat price and cost cutting leading Western solar panel producers like Solarworld to try and get dumping duties imposed on them.SMA Solar is the world’s biggest Photovoltaic Inverter manufacturer and is closely followed by US based Power One.