Power inverter in China

We are at the business end regarding solar power inverter installations. Although we do also Wind-, Hydro- and Biomass installations, we are currently flat out surveying and installing solar PV inverter systems. Mainly domestic systems between 1.5 and 4 kW at the moment. We have however surveyed a number of locations on farms for power inverter systems between 30 and 100 kW which we will be installing later this summer.

Supply is indeed a bit of headache although right now inverters more so than modules (for up to 4 kW that is). SMA has been fairly upfront about the bottlenecks causing the power inverter shortage and we can assume the same reasons apply to other power inverter manufacturers in the industry. For the larger commercial installations we do however currently look into importing the components directly. Some module manufacturers have already indicated they won't be able to supply us because of the increase in demand across Europe and also China itself.

To this end our MD is off to China next week to try and solve the supply chain issue for the bigger commercial installations. If you have a viable alternative solution we sure would like to hear it though.

Since the majority of our installations are domestic and even amongst the commercial solar power inverter projects we are currently pursuing there are only a few above that 50 kW threshold and hence I made no mention of it.
Just to clarify, for domestic installations, typically up to 4 kW, there is no shortage of MCS accredited modules so far. There is however a shortage for grid-connected inverters.

For our commercial projects, 20 kW and above, we are doing ok on the power inverters but trying to buy modules in bulk appears to be an issue because some inverter manufacturers don't have any spare capacity at current demand levels. And because of most of these projects being less than 50 kW, we will have to source these modules from the MCS accreditation list.