Intersolar Europe: An Upbeat Atmosphere Across the Board

Year in, year out, Intersolar Europe is one of my top events. Last week, the inter-national PV industry descended on Munich again, and the atmosphere was the best it has been in a long time. That much was clear at the SolarPower Europe Industrial Forum, at which I was a member of the panel, as well as in the conversations that I had with international customers from all segments and with journalists – and, of course, at SMA’s well-attended booth.

Intersolar was a good opportunity for me to speak to a wide range of business partners from all areas and regions within a short space of time. The in-depth discussions rein-forced my optimistic outlook for the remainder of the year. Numerous customers who had been rather reticent at last year’s trade fair wanted this year to talk to us about specific projects they were interested to get off the ground.

Market growth and large-scale projects

Some of these projects are already contributing to the global growth on the PV market that all experts are anticipating this year. Europe is playing an instrumental role in this. That was very much in evidence at the Industrial Forum held by SolarPower Europe. At the event, I discussed the future industrial strategy for the European solar industry with other representatives from the energy and storage industry. The good prospects for the European PV market are exceptionally positive for SMA, because the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, where we are expecting annual growth rates of more than 20 percent by 2021, is one of our primary sales regions.

We also see a lot of potential for SMA on the U.S. market. We took one very significant first step last week, when we signed a contract with a leading U.S. project developer to supply medium-voltage systems with the new Sunny Central UP. In doing so, we secured the largest order in the history of SMA.

At Intersolar, however, it was not only the investors and developers of large PV projects who were in a mood of optimism, but also the distributors and installers. This was palpable at our booth, where visitors crowded throughout the entire trade fair. Naturally, the fully electric Audi e-tron on our booth was a real crowd-puller, demonstrating how we integrate vehicles into customers’ home energy management systems with the new SMA Energy Meter. There was also a good reception for the SMA EV-Charger, which we will be offering starting in early 2020 as a simple, fast and affordable solution for charging electric vehicles.

360-degree support for installers

For installers in particular, the new SMA Energy Systems Home and Business took center stage, alongside our 360° Installer Support Center. These enable us to offer our customers genuine, long-term added value. On their behalf, we take the complexity out of the increasingly decentralized and digital world of energy while opening up new business potential for them.

With the SMA Energy Systems, we have developed complete system packages containing perfectly matched hardware and software as well as services for PV, storage and energy management in households and businesses. In addition, our new SMA 360° app offers installers all-around support in all aspects of their day-to-day work. For the first time, they can use a single interface on a cell phone or tablet to easily and conveniently enter and update customer data, to simulate, register and monitor systems and to enjoy the benefits of additional services.

With solutions of this kind, we offer our customers maximum added value that goes beyond our PV inverters. With these system packages, we can essentially translate our years of experience and understanding of the system into valuable customer benefits. This is because we are able to map the complexity of the new energy world through simple solutions that focus on our customers’ needs. Intersolar Europe has shown that we are on the right track with this. We will continue to build on our strengths and take advantage of the opportunities open to SMA both in our core business and in the new, digital business fields.

Here SMA CEO Jürgen Reinert writes about topics that move him.