PV Inverter Trends

Objectives Of The Report

This report presents the existing PV inverter solutions with the evolution of the main parameters:

• Size
• Efficiency
• Cost and reliability

The reader will be able to understand the main technical challenges, current solutions and future trends regarding those parameters.

This report also includes an important topic, which has only recently appeared as a key point for PV inverter business: the evolution of its environment.

PV plants can have highly diversified structures due to:

• Local configuration,
• Shadows,
• Distance between buildings,
• Available area,
• Size of the installation?

Thus, one of the objectives of this report is to understand the trends for those architectures, and see their impact on PV inverter systems and on strategy of the suppliers active in this arena.

Inverter market forecasts presented following our segmentation: residential; industrial; commercial; and, solar farms ? are analyzed taking into account the 2009 crisis and impact on PV industry. We further divide the data into 4 Regions:

• Europe,
• North America,
• Asia,
• Rest of world

Review of the main players:

• 5 profiles of different company strategies in the PV inverter industry
• Analysis of the vertical integration of PV industry
• Market share of main players

Market Trends

The PV inverter business is following general PV market trends: the latter being driven by financial support provided by governments and development of well-established companies.

Yole Dé veloppement has estimated the 2008 PV inverter market at a bit more than ?2.5 billion, mainly driven by the Spanish solar farm segment and German market. We do not expect the 2009 PV inverter business to surpass this level. Effectively, 2009 has faced the crisis and seen Spain cut its subsidies. On the other hand, 2009 has also seen the birth of more countries ready to encourage PV as a new source of energy, meaning very interesting feed-in tariffs and loans. In addition, a new era of standardization in the residential segment of the PV inverter business has begun.

Newest PV inverter developments have shown interesting results at different levels:

• Evolution of key characteristics (efficiency, cost, reliability)
• Use of new materials (SiC, GaN, ?)
• Adoption of disruptive technologies like micro-inverters, all those parameters imply an important variety of players? strategy.

The latest advancements are having and will have consequent impacts on PV inverters themselves and on the environment into which they evolve: demand from large installations induces an increase of inverter size and centralization, and new inverter solutions support atypical plant topologies. Besides this centralization trend and the objective to provide bigger inverters, micro-inverters appear as an alternative solution, challenging every well-established characteristic of classical inverter industry solutions. The recent acquisition of OKE by SMA is a revealing fact of micro-inverters introduction on the market. It has subsequently a significant impact on classical PV inverter business, industry and players.

Nevertheless, the early stage of production adoption of supports Yole Dé veloppement estimation which says that micro-inverter technology will stay below 1% of 2009 market.

The technological breakthrough and the large opportunity that PV inverter market represents have a serious impact on players behavior: most of them who considered the inverter as a final product, now see an interest in capturing more value through integration of new functionality focused on the return on investment of the entire installation: Monitoring, Electrical protection, Services like on-site maintenance, warranty?

Vertical integration of the PV supply chain keeps on evolving and companies are working together on common objectives for an accurate and complete offer.

Companies Mentioned

SMA, Fronius, SEPSA, Ingeteam, Enphase, Enecsys, Kaco, MasterVolt, Schneider Electric, Xantrex, SolarMax, SolarMagic, Siemens, PowerOne, AEG, Danfoss, GreenPower IC Lab, ISET, Fraunhoffer ISE, Mitsubishi Electric, ABB, Semikron, MicroSemi, Ixys, Vincotech, Infineon, PetraSolar, Sunsil, Yamaichi Electronics, Ferraz Shawmut, Socomec, PVPowered, Tepco, Comverge, SemiSouth, Siba, SolarBridge, Schneider Electric, Conergy, Sunpower, Firstsolar, PhotoWatt, Siliken, etc...

Who Should Buy This Report

• Inverter manufacturers
• Panel manufacturers
• Integrators
• Start-ups involved in PV inverter business
• Companies involved in inverter business and looking to enter PV inverter business
• Financial and strategic investors