NEWS I REVIEW
Chinese PV inverters make the grade
A NEW survey of more than 400 buyers of PV inverters has revealed a growing acceptance of Chinese products, with close to 30% of respondents indicating they were of acceptable quality, according to IMS Research. The recent survey, conducted in Q4 last year also revealed however that customers also wanted increased reliability, functionality and yields, with more than half prepared to pay a premium for a 1% yield gain.
IMS Research’s new “PV Inverter Customer Opinions & Requirements Survey” report, reveals a number of interesting trends for PV inverters in the future as well as reasons behind their buyers’ choice of supplier and product. Whilst there was very strong brand preference for Western suppliers of inverters, with SMA Solar Technology confirmed as clear leader, many customers indicated that they trusted Chinese brands too, with customers in Italy and the UK being the most accepting. Despite this, the survey found that most customers still prefer Western inverter suppliers and had several demands for better products. Report co-author and market analyst, Cormac Gilligan commented, “The most important product feature for string inverters was having more MPPT channels and a wider MPP range. Whilst central inverter customers also want this, they see improved system monitoring and fault detection of ultimate importance to them”.
The on-going trend of building large installations using three-phase string inverters was also evident from the survey and more than 70% of respondents indicated they would consider using a string inverter in PV systems over 750kW in size. In fact, more than 30% said they would use string inverters to build MW- sized projects.
Nearly 70% of customers wanted monitoring diagnostics right down to the string level, with 15% wanting to monitor each panel individually. This appears to show a great opportunity for panel-level electronics.
Senior Research Director, Ash Sharma
commented. “Despite only being used in 1% of installations last year, more than 10% of customers are intending to use microinverters for some of their projects in the next 12-24 months, with an even greater number wanting to use DC-DC power optimisers”.
Conversely, the survey also found that many customers wouldn’t use microinverters due to their higher costs and because they remain a new and still unproven technology.
Although customers were expecting better performing inverter products in future, with more features and higher efficiencies, most expected prices to fall over the next three years with most expecting a 20-30% reduction.
Despite many respondents indicating they would be willing to pay for higher yields, nearly all said they expected their inverters to have more features and higher quality for lower prices. The survey results indicated that this was probably to be due to the way customers determine their preferred inverter price.
“Nearly half of all customers said that they determined their inverter price based on their overall system budget. With module and system prices falling rapidly, this inherently puts more pressure on inverter prices to fall too”, added Gilligan.
Several hundred buyers of PV inverters such as installers, distributors, wholesalers, integrators and EPCs were surveyed by IMS Research to understand more about their purchasing habits when selecting an inverter and a vendor.
Yingli in 200MW module deal with IBC
YINGLI GREEN ENERGY HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED under the brand “Yingli Solar,” has announced that it has entered into a supply agreement with IBC SOLAR AG “IBC”. Under the terms of the agreement, Yingli has agreed to supply 180 MW of multi-crystalline and mono-crystalline (Panda) PV modules to IBC during the year of 2012. IBC has an option to purchase another 20 MW in 2012 under the Agreement. The modules are expected to be installed in Germany, other European countries, as well as globally.
“We are pleased to enhance our partnership with IBC,” commented Mr. Liansheng Miao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Yingli Green Energy. “Based on the strong faith that we have in each other, Yingli Green Energy and IBC have gone through the up-and-downs of the solar industry and achieved significant growth of our businesses during the past several years. We believe this Agreement demonstrates our partners’ strong confidence in the continuous growth of the PV industry and indicates the robust demand of our products in 2012. We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with IBC and other partners to seize the enormous opportunities ahead.”
Udo Moehrstedt, founder and CEO of IBC SOLAR, added, “We have been working very successfully with Yingli Solar for five years now. Foundation of the trustful cooperation between our two companies is the high quality of Yingli’s modules, as well as the strategic strength of Yingli. IBC SOLAR will continue to drive the adoption of photovoltaics globally, and we consider Yingli as one of our partners in achieving this goal.”
Issue I 2012 I
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