SMA Solar Technology AG will expand its presence in South Africa; including setting up Sunny Central inverter production in the country.
Sunny Central PV inverters are specially engineered for large scale solar power stations.
The South African market for solar products is growing rapidly and SMA is keen to position itself to provide the necessary capacities for the expected uptake.
“South Africa has strategic importance for SMA. The country has good economic growth with a corresponding increase in energy demand,” said SMA Chief Executive Officer Pierre-Pascal Urbon. “Here, photovoltaics is already a financially attractive alternative to other forms of power generation.”
Preparations for construction have already begun and SMA says South African production will be “just as flexible as existing SMA inverter productions in Germany and North America,” enabling the company to respond quickly to changes in demand.
In other recent SMA news, the world’s leading inverter manufacturer has won the Smart Energy Award 2013 in the energy information and communication technology category for its SMA Smart Home automatic energy management system.
The system consists of an energy manager that uses local and plant-specific generation forecasts as well as a flexible battery storage system, which can also be retrofitted in existing installations of solar panels.
As part of the Smart Home suite, the company will introduce the SMA Integrated Storage System to the market in the second half of this year; which is a wall-mountable device combining a solar inverter with a lithium-ion battery.
The 2013 Smart Energy award is recognized as the Hessian state prize for intelligent energy. “Hessian” refers to Hesse/Hessen, a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.
SMA is headquartered in Niestetal, Germany, and is represented internationally in 21 countries. The Group employs more than 5,000 people and last year generated sales of €1.5 billion.
Related:
