SMA Solar Technology and BYD., one of the world’s largest manufacturers of rechargeable batteries, have announced a strategic global storage partnership.
Image: SMA and BYD expand global energy storage partnership. Photo courtesy of SMA Solar Technology AG.
Both companies have collaborated very successfully in the European market and APAC region and will now expand the partnership to jointly address additional markets with a high growth potential such as the US and African markets. The new strategic partnership was sealed at BYD’s headquarters in Pingshan, Shenzhen, China on October 23rd.
According to SEIA’s September report the U.S. installed 2.3GW of solar PV capacity in Q2 2018 to reach 58.3 gigawatts (GW) of total installed capacity, enough to power 11 million American homes. Total installed U.S. PV capacity is expected to more than double over the next five years, and by 2023, over 14 GW of PV capacity will be installed annually.
“This is a huge market potential which we’d like to address together with a trusted partner like SMA to offer customers end-to-end solutions for all their energy storage demands”, said Julia Chen, Global Sales Director, BYD Batteries. “SMA is one of the most trusted brands in the market and we have built a very successful partnership between our companies during past years, which contributed to the success of our Battery-Box energy storage solutions in the European and APAC markets. We are delighted to expand the cooperation with SMA and to combine our resources for our joint goal of advancing the utilization of renewable energy solutions.”
SMA and BYD started their cooperation in 2015 with a combined offering of the low voltage energy storage system BYD Battery-Box and SMA’s Sunny island inverters, which was especially successful in off-grid applications. In 2017 the combined offering of BYD’s high voltage lithium battery storage system – Battery-Box HV – for use with the SMA Sunny Boy Storage inverters also achieved a high market interest and was particularly well suited to match the trend towards self-consumption.
With the expanded partnership both companies will now collaborate by jointly developing technical solutions as well as driving joint marketing for these solutions aimed at the residential and commercial energy storage market. The partners will also continue to offer bundled solutions which address the needs of their customers for end-to-end solutions in the energy storage field. A special focus of the expanded collaboration will be the growth in the US market. Additional growth markets such as Africa complement the joint international growth initiatives, especially as the companies can utilize their joint success for off-grid application experience.
“BYD is one of the leading lithium battery manufacturers and storage solution suppliers worldwide and their systems, just like our solutions, help users to maximize their self-consumption of PV power,” said Nick Morbach, Executive Vice President business unit Residential & Commercial at SMA. “After the successful collaboration in the past years it was a logical step to expand the partnership for an international cooperation in which we will offer complete system solutions to our international customers. Based on SMA’s new energy management platform ennexOS, these solutions will enable owners of residential and commercial PV systems to connect battery systems with PV and other energy sectors and secure highly efficient operation, thus providing for maximum energy cost savings.”
Source: Company Press Release