We haven’t posted any industry news for a while, but a couple of our favourite product manufacturers recently revealed some excellent news, so we thought it’s a good opportunity to share some updates.
Sungrow make our mid price point inverters. We primarily use them for residential installs, with their 5kW grid-connected SG5K inverter being very popular, with the SH5K hybrid 5kW inverter being our top pick for battery projects.
Canadian Solar make our mid price point solar panels. Again primarily for residential, we love their 300W polycrystalline panel for its price-to-performance ratio, although for certain situations we’re also fans of the 330W or even 365W monocrystalline panels.
As such, our Canadian-Sungrow package is one of our best-selling combinations, with thousands of happy customers. This combination of solar panels and inverter, operate in the top 10% of the industry in terms of the size of the manufacturers, and the efficiency of the products. Importantly though, they are in the top 1% of manufacturers when looking at value for money they offer.
Anyway, onto the news.
Canadian Solar have recently released their financials, and they’re incredible.
> In Q1 2019, they had $485m in revenue, and a net profit of -$17m.
> In Q1 2020, they had $825m in revenue, and a net profit of $110m.
This beat all market expectations, especially given the difficult times we are in right now. This is primarily fuelled by a large increase in shipments. It seems the virus can’t stop great solar!
What else? Well, a couple of months ago Amazon signed a PPA with Canadian Solar in Australia, meaning the ~150MW Gunnedah Solar Farm will be powering a huge section of the Aussie internet via Amazon Web Services. IKEA still have an ongoing agreement with Canadian Solar, installing a total of 3.6MW of PV on the roofs of various IKEA buildings. And Canadian Solar also are involved in the 256MW Kiamal Solar Farm, the largest solar farm in Victoria, which has recently been completed and should be coming online shortly.
GI Energy value bankability of companies over most other factors, and increased revenues, increased profits, and huge projects in the pipeline, at all signs of high bankability.
Sungrow have recently announced they’re joining of the RE100. The RE100 is a collaboration of businesses with the joint goal of transitioning to purely renewable energy sources to combat climate change. This means that Sungrow have publicly committed to using 100% renewable energy in all its global manufacturing and operations by 2028, and they will share all their electricity data as proof of their actions towards this target.
What else? The recently-released report by Wood Mackenzie confirmed that, for the fifth year running, Sungrow are the second-largest inverter producer worldwide, with only Huawei shipping more MW of inverting capacity. SMA come in third, with FIMER in fifth. The fourth-place company, Power Electronics, are not available down under.
Again, when it comes to bankability, these are great signs. Being committed to the future, and having the resources to invest in the future, is a sign of a highly-bankable company. And the fact they’re second-largest in the world too doesn’t hurt!
For the last decade GI Energy have worked extremely hard behind the scenes to make sure we are offering the best solar panels and inverters possible. It is worth noting here that we have a large range of solar panels and inverters available and that Sungrow and Canadian Solar may not be the perfect fit products for your solar project. Every client has different needs in terms of budgets, roof design and expectations for their solar project so we operate in a way that allows us to be really flexible with the way we design systems. As an example, you may need micro-inverters or single panel optimisers if you have lots of shade or a complex roof design. There are also lots of solar battery options to consider and some may not work with the Sungrow range of inverters for various reasons.
To summarise… We love solar! We love Canadian Solar panels and we love Sungrow inverters. It is always nice to share positive news about manufacturers we work closely with. Click here to see our full review on Canadian Solar and Sungrow inverters for more information.
