Procurement update
Last week, Erwin (Procurement Manager) and Hans (Commercial Director) travelled to China to meet with our suppliers. A trip where new insights and information were gathered about our solar market. What mainly impressed them was the ongoing expansion of production capacity, throughout the entire Supply Chain, in China. It is very impressive to see how all stakeholders are working tirelessly to provide the world with sustainable energy. Erwin is happy to tell you more about the trends and developments he foresees in the procurement of all your solar supplies.
Assortment and price expectations
In terms of innovations in the product portfolio’s, we don’t expect technological breakthrough developments. In the field of solar panels, mainly the output per panel will go up. Manufacturers will develop towards N-Type cell technology. In the field of inverters, manufacturers are mainly innovating a lot in the areas of storage and EV charging solutions. During our visit at Sungrow, we were introduced to the new product range of commercial charging stations.
“In terms of solar panel prices, I expect the gradual decrease to continue towards the end of this year.” Now, we see that raw materials for solar panels are still on a downward trend. Manufacturers are expected to announce new prices this week following SNEC – the world’s largest solar trade fair.
Across the entire Supply Chain, we see all stakeholders going all out to increase capacity and make shortages quickly a thing of the past. This is exactly what we see happening in the inverter market. All manufacturers are scaling up production capacities substantially. This will not change anything for today or tomorrow, but more supply is expected to become available in June/July. The reason for this is that not one manufacturer has started scaling up, but most inverter manufacturers have significantly increased their production capacity. Which would then suggest that we, Europe, can expect an increase in the number of deliveries of both inverters and batteries in August/September.
Visiting new supplier SOFAR
Last April, we confirmed our collaboration with inverter manufacturer SOFAR. This partnership allows us to offer our partners a wider range of inverters for the C&I market. During our trip we visited SOFAR’s brand-new factory. A colossal complex with the latest cutting-edge technologies in robotisation and automation. Not only focused on the most efficient way to produce, but it also features the latest, most advanced solutions in labour engineering. In this factory, you no longer see a single production worker having to turn or lift the product, everything is time-programmed and automated that the product is exactly in the right position for the worker. Amazing to see how far technology has come.
In addition to visiting the production lines, we also took extensive time to have a closer look at SOFAR’s quality controls. What impressed us was that every inverter is fully tested – a true 3×100% check:
With these comprehensive checks of the entire production, SOFAR ensures that the expected failure rate after installation is reduced to an absolute minimum. This is a major advantage over many other manufacturers who carry out sample checks of inverters from the assembly line.
Coming soon: a more in-depth update on price trends and developments.
