Germany voted. The exploratory talks regarding the formation of a new German Federal Government are already ramping up. The demonstrations by the Fridays for Future movement in which more than 600,000 people participated in 470 locations last Friday impressively underlined once more that climate policy must occupy a central role in the negotiations. If the fight against the climate crisis is to be effective, the new Federal Government must not simply settle for “more of the same.” We need faster and far more substantial expansion of renewable energy sources.

The best way of cutting your electricity costs as much as possible is simply to turn on your home appliances when your rooftop PV system is generating electricity. The problem with that is that we are often at work or otherwise not at home in the middle of the day when the PV system is generating the most electricity. This means that we can’t switch our appliances on ourselves. That’s why we manage our home appliances automatically with the SMA Sunny Home Manager 2.0. It switches our home appliances on when the PV system is generating sufficient electricity. Read on to find out how we can use this system to save hundreds of euros on electricity costs every year.

Whether a pointed gable, tented roof, modern city villa, single-family home or apartment building, it also pays to install PV modules on the north-facing side of buildings. This delivers more energy yields and makes system operators independent of rising electricity prices. With the Sunny Design planning software, you can display up to six module arrays during system planning, allowing you to incorporate more roof surfaces into the design from the outset. We will show you how to do this (including with a carport) for north-facing installations as well, because diffuse light can also result in a good yield. The software allows you to easily design complex systems in a single step.

It has been over 12 months since our family had a solar system installed. Did we achieve our goal of a zero cost electricity bill? And where do we go with our solar journey now to save electricity and reduce our carbon emissions even further? Read on to find out.

Storage and PV power plants are system-relevant. The energy transition cannot succeed without them. If a power plant fails, the costs mount up very quickly. Michael Ploechl is the head of the SMA monitoring location in Germany and he and his team ensure that it doesn’t come to that. Despite this responsibility, Ploechl generally remains relaxed. He can afford to. Because at two locations in the U.S. and Germany, expert teams analyze the system performance of power plants worldwide 24/7 in real time. The professionals in Rocklin and Ulm ensure that everything runs smoothly. In our interview, he explains why operating expenditure is more important than capital expenditure and how rabbits occasionally cause him some trouble.

The design stage of a PV system is crucial to ensure optimal production from the installation and to secure the investment objective. There are several software tools that perform simulations according to the configuration of the installation, its location, orientation and energy requirements, including PVsyst. In this article, Julien Le Bars, Applications and Project Engineer at SMA France, shares his three points for optimal use of the tool (version 7.2.1).

The Sunny Design planning software has been used to plan millions of PV systems worldwide since 2007. The new release coming out in late April lets you precisely model where shading might be on the modules and shows you where direct irradiation is lost.

  [Update dated June 29, 2022 | Software update 1.02.23.R and longer charging cables] SMA EV Charger ensures that you...

U.S. President Joe Biden has invited 40 international heads of government to a virtual climate summit he is hosting tomorrow, on Earth Day. An important initiative, because only swift joint action can stop the increasingly dramatic global warming to which the recently published UN climate report 2020 again attests.

SMA generated over one billion euros in sales and doubled its operating result in 2020 despite the coronavirus crisis – as the Managing Board forecast at the start of the crisis. We put three questions about this to Chief Executive Officer Jürgen Reinert.