Huawei ranks second in solar inverter shipments in the first half of the year

EnergyTrend's latest "Taiwan Power Station Project Integration Report" points out that Taiwan began to enforce inverter VPC certification on May 20 this year. Compared with overseas manufacturers, most Taiwanese inverter manufacturers began to deploy VPC last year. Therefore, from the inverter shipments in the Taiwan market in the first half of the year, it can be seen that Taiwanese manufacturers performed relatively well.

In terms of the ranking of the top 10 inverter manufacturers in the Taiwan market in the first half of this year, Delta Electronics continued to hold the top spot in shipments, while Huawei was not affected by the US ban and ranked second. Goodwe, a Chinese company, entered the Taiwan market very early and sent VPC for testing earlier, so its shipments in the first half of the year rose to fourth place.

The shipment volume of German manufacturer SMA declined significantly in the first half of the year, mainly because its strategic layout in Taiwan has not yet been clarified after it withdrew from the mainland market at the end of last year. It is worth noting that Satcon, the American manufacturer that ranked second in 2018, has not yet obtained VPC and has been affected by the adjustment of its agent strategy, so its sales volume in the first half of the year was relatively low and it fell out of the top 10 rankings.

On the other hand, analyzing the Taiwan solar module market, in the first half of this year, United Renewable Energy still ranked first in shipments, AUO ranked second, and Canadian Solar (CSI) entered the top 3 for the first time. The fourth and fifth places were Tongyu and Yuanjing.

Among them, compared with last year, the proportion of Taiwan market in United Renewable Energy's overall shipments in the first half of this year decreased by about 10%, which shows that the global strategic layout has been adjusted. After AUO, which is closely behind, adjusted its sales strategy, its shipments grew significantly compared with the same period last year.

Yuanjing's shipments in the first half of the year mainly benefited from the contribution of large-scale projects from system suppliers. In addition, the 150 kilowatt (MW) ground-mounted project in Qigu, Tainan, Taiwan, which was obtained in March this year, will start shipping from the second half of the year. It is estimated that the company's annual shipment ranking will move up. As for Taiwan Solar Module Manufacturing Company (TSMMC), which came from behind, it rose to the sixth place due to the large-scale system supplier project obtained in the first half of the year.

Last year, Taiwan's solar energy installation exceeded 1 million kilowatts (GW) for the first time, attracting many foreign investors to set up solar power stations in Taiwan. Therefore, the Energy Bureau has raised this year's installation target to 1.5GW. In order to meet the target, it also plans to start from four major aspects: Taisugar demonstration projects, industrial zone rooftop factories, large developer promotion projects, and consent filing cases that have been applied for in 2018.

Analyst Chen Junying pointed out that Taiwan is in the early stages of electricity liberalization and still needs to rely on bulk purchase rate subsidies to drive solar installations. Therefore, if the cumulative total installation volume is to reach the 20GW target by 2025, the average bulk purchase rate (Average FiT) is recommended to decrease by about 4% each year before 2025. Based on the average bulk purchase rate of NT$5.4258/kWh (the same unit below) in 2019, the average FIT price in 2025 will be about NT$4.2472/kWh, which can still maintain the basic internal rate of return (IRR) for power station investors.

Chen Junying said that the global trend is that the bulk purchase rate is decreasing year by year. For power station investors, it is imperative to pursue a lower levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). How to use power gain modules and inverters that can increase power generation under the premise of low levelized cost of electricity has become the primary consideration of power station investors and the key for module and inverter manufacturers to gain a firm foothold in the market.