Interaction: Honey Raza, Head Sales India – Solis Inverter
Power Insight: How do you look at the growth seen by the Solar inverter market in recent past in India? What is the present size of market ?
Honey Raza: The current rooftop installation in the country shall be touching the 5GW mark and utility sector shall be around 30GW. String inverter market shall be 98% in the rooftop segment and place around 10% for the utility segment. We expect the deployment and acceptability of string inverters to rise further to 20% in the current FY. This is due to the acceptance amongst the key players for this technology in terms of better OPEX and concerns for total cost of ownership of the assets.
Power Insight: Will you be able to shed some light on present solar inverter market prices and technology trends in India?
Honey Raza: Constant innovation and optimization at product level is the only way to exist in the present competitive environment. Low bids translate the pressure on every level of the whole value chain. Support and collaborative efforts is what needed in the industry.
Price we see shall remain constant, the shortage of power electronic semiconductors devices are still continuing from last year and are expected to improve this year.
Multiple MPPT inverters technology shall dominate the rooftop sector and higher capacity inverters of 100kW and above shall dominate the utility segment.
Power Insight: What are your goals / expectations for FY 2018-19, how many inverters’ did you supply to India during the first 3 quarter of the present FY 2018-19?
Honey Raza: The overall inverters supplied is around 180MWs catering to all the three segments of market – Residential, Commercial and utility.
Commercial and Industrial segment shall be the driving force for this year.
We expect to ship more than 400MWs this year. Successful adaptability of Solis Inverters by the rooftop developers is acting as a driving force for acquiring utility segment.
Power Insight: Tell us briefly about your product offerings and production capabilities for the Indian market?
Honey Raza: Wide variety of products catering to all the three segments of Residential, Commercial and Utility are there in our portfolio.
- Residential: 1kW – 5kW in Single Phase & 5kW – 10kW in Three phase
- Commercial: 5kW – 60kW in Three Phase
- Utility: 60kW – HV (480Vs) .
We are currently having fully vertically integrated manufacturing empowering better control on quality. Present capacity is 38000 inverters units per month.
Power Insight: What are your views on the competition in market? Tell us about company USP, that provides you the edge in the market?
Honey Raza: Every day we are facing new entrants in the market but they key is the sustainability and reliability. Good Service shall be the only way to move forward.
In Solis Inverters we are constantly improving and optimizing the product adhered to the needs of the market without compromising on the quality.
Our biggest strengths are use of best component which we import from Japan, USA, Europe etc. These accounts about 99% of the total components in the inverters.
Our R&D team is the working continuously towards higher efficiency, extended uptime and better heat management in the inverters.
Power Insight: What difficulties have inverter vendors in India faced during the last few month as a result of the safeguard duties and currency depreciation that have prevailed in India’s solar industry?
Honey Raza: Yes there was some uncertainty regarding the SGD and Rupee depreciation which resulted in delay of projects but now Government has taken adequate step in solving the issues. Other issue pertaining to GST is also now resolved and clear amongst the developers. This year we expect the sector to achieve 30% growth level as compared to last year.
Timely redressal and addressing the issue of each stack holder was very well handled by MNRE.
Power Insight: Brief us on your future plans and your commitments to India’s solar industry?
Honey Raza: We see India as the most important strategic market. The growth drivers like Government Policies, Financial support and increasing trust of the developers in the clean energy are conducive for the solar energy sector growth.
We have long term plan for India and would abide by the commitment towards our customers.
