Leading companies are erecting new barriers to competition

With the introduction of a series of favorable policies such as the "dual carbon" goals, whole-county distributed power, and large wind and solar bases, the downstream photovoltaic market has surged. Since the beginning of this year, the scale of photovoltaic indicators gradually issued by various provinces and cities has reached nearly 100 GW. While the market has expanded, it has also accelerated the arrival of a new round of competition among inverter companies.

According to the latest statistics, central state-owned enterprises such as Huadian, Datang, and State Power Investment Corporation have successively launched bidding for inverters with a capacity of over 80GW, and the bids of enterprises that have announced the winning bids often differ by a fraction of a millimeter. For inverter enterprises that are gradually emerging from the quagmire of the "price war", where will the focus of the new round of competition be?

Top-level collaboration between technology and market

Competition among inverter companies has almost never stopped, and the focus of competition has changed several times, from heat dissipation, centralization and string, two-way MPPT to multi-way MPPT, 1000V to 1500V, from price wars to industry reshuffles and countless new entrants. After more than ten years of competition, the inverter industry has made great technological progress and the BOS cost and the cost per kilowatt-hour have dropped significantly.

The fierce competition has naturally led to the rise of leading companies and the demise of losers. According to the 2021 global inverter shipment rankings released by IHS Markit, industry leader Sungrow took the top spot, and the reason behind this is its perfect integration of technology, products and markets.

Li Shun, vice president of Sungrow Power Supply, said, "Sungrow Power Supply has been promoting technology research and development and product innovation, especially in power electronics technology. It has always insisted on continuous technological innovation and product upgrades, and constantly improved the top-level synergy advantages of technology, products and markets." In 2021, Sungrow Power Supply's R&D expenses exceeded 1.16 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44%. At present, Sungrow has established six major R&D centers in Hefei, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Munich and the Netherlands. R&D personnel account for more than 40% of the total number of employees, and a total of more than 4,400 patents have been applied for. It has achieved fruitful results in key areas, core technology research and industrialization, providing important support for the top-level synergy of technology and products.

After the full parity of photovoltaic power, the application scenarios of photovoltaic power have become more diverse and complex, which has put forward higher requirements for the deep coordination ability of technology, products and market demand. Facing the diverse markets and heterogeneous demands in more than 150 countries and regions around the world, Sungrow focuses deeply, adapts to local conditions, and innovates and flexibly designs, forming a full range of innovative product families and system solutions for all scenarios with power ranging from 10kW to 8.8MW, and constantly introduces new products to maintain its absolute leading edge.

Last year, Sungrow launched the high-power string inverter SG320HX, leading the 300kW+ string technology; 1+X modular inverter, which made a major innovation to the traditional inverter, combining the advantages of centralized inverter and string inverter, and the independent MPPT design of each module, with higher tracking accuracy and plug-and-play simple operation and maintenance, created a new category in the industry. At the same time, three scenario solutions were launched for household, industrial and commercial distributed and county photovoltaic, fully assisting the promotion of photovoltaic in the whole county.

Although Sungrow has made remarkable achievements in the field of inverters, it seems that it is not satisfied with the status quo. Li Shun frankly said that it is not possible to increase power generation by simply relying on the innovation of inverter technology, but it is necessary to innovate from the perspective of the entire power station system, which is also the main direction that Sungrow will continue to invest heavily in research in the future.

Solar-storage integration - building a new barrier for inverters

Since the "dual carbon" goal was set, the scale of photovoltaic power stations has accelerated. In 2021, the scale of new photovoltaic grid-connected capacity reached a record high of 54.88GW. The China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research expects that the scale of new photovoltaic capacity this year may reach 100GW. Behind the rapid growth of photovoltaic installed capacity is the increasing impact on the power grid. Building a new generation of friendly photovoltaic power stations has become an industry consensus.

In Li Shun's opinion, as the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic inverters has generally reached more than 99%, the increase in the power generation of the entire photovoltaic power station has gradually reached its peak in terms of the equipment itself. More attention should be paid to the chain extending beyond the end-to-end, and systematic products should be created with the inverter as the core.

Taking the medium voltage side as an example, in the past, manufacturers of medium voltage transformers did not understand the working scenarios and working conditions of the front end of photovoltaic power stations. Sungrow started from the system-wide station design and pioneered the industry's first intelligent medium voltage shutdown solution. Through the information exchange and algorithm control between the inverter, the circuit breaker on the collector line, and the step-up transformer, it realizes nighttime intelligent shutdown, reduces the nighttime SVG operation loss, and eliminates the nighttime no-load loss of photovoltaic power stations. In addition, Sungrow has deeply cooperated with relevant research institutions of the national power system and continuously improved software algorithms to actively respond to grid needs and provide more support for the grid.

While investing in power electronics technology and digital intelligence, Sungrow has long been deeply involved in the layout of related products for the integration of photovoltaic and energy storage. In 2021, Sungrow's energy storage system shipments achieved geometric growth, with global shipments reaching 3GWh, accounting for 13% of its revenue.

Sungrow's photovoltaic and energy storage integration has always been at the forefront of the industry, which is also their biggest advantage in leading the industry. In terms of products, in May this year, the industry's first "three-electric integration" full-series liquid-cooled energy storage solution PowerTitan and PowerStack were launched. Through the same platform design of software and hardware, all key equipment such as ESS, PCS, and EMS are self-developed, realizing professional integrated integration of energy storage systems, allowing energy storage safety and grid safety to change from passive protection and adaptation to active safety and support, further improving life, increasing efficiency, and reducing losses, and comprehensively reducing LCOS (energy storage cost per kilowatt-hour) by more than 20%.

Talking about the new competitive focus in the inverter industry, Li Shun believes that "to look at the specific market, for ground-based power stations, it is higher voltage, power and power density, and for household and distributed use, it is miniaturization, intelligence and greenness of products. But there is no doubt that the commanding heights of the inverter industry in the future will no longer be a single product competition, but more will fall on specific system solutions."

Healthy competition has always been the main theme of the photovoltaic industry. The cost advantage of photovoltaic power generation and the competition with other energy categories have led to a broader development prospect for the photovoltaic industry. Internally, the competition among equipment companies has promoted technological progress and the reduction of electricity costs. As the industry leader, Sungrow is building its new competitive barriers and redefining inverters through a full range of systematic product innovation paths, such as top-level synergy between products and markets, and deep integration of photovoltaics and storage, with inverters as the core.

Meeting notice: The proposal of the "30·60" dual carbon goals and the construction of a new power system has laid the main tone for China's new energy development in the "14th Five-Year Plan". The wind power and photovoltaic industries have ushered in a new era of market-oriented development at parity or even low prices. At the same time, they will also face multiple challenges such as large-scale development and high consumption levels, power safety, system peak regulation, stability and reliability, complex environment and technological cost reduction. The task of high-quality development of renewable energy is arduous and there is still a long way to go.

In this context, PVmen, Fengmang Energy, Energy Storage and Power Market, and PowerChina Chengdu Survey and Design Institute will jointly host the "China New Energy Power Development Forum and the 7th New Energy Power Station Design, Engineering and Equipment Selection Seminar" in Chengdu, Sichuan from November 23 to 24, 2022. The conference will conduct multi-dimensional discussions on design, engineering construction, equipment selection, and power peak regulation in the fields of new energy power development, photovoltaics, wind power, energy storage, and integrated energy, to help the industry continue to develop healthily and contribute to the dual carbon goals.