Sungrow mulling another new inverter factory outside of China

Sungrow told pv magazine at the recent Intersolar South America event in Sao Paulo that its cumulative delivered capacity in Latin America now stands at 9 GW, with 6 GW of the total delivered to Brazil alone.

Image: Sungrow

Share

Changes have been made on September 1, 2022 at 16:53 CEST.

From pv magazine global

Ada Li, head of Latin America at Sungrow, told pv magazine that the Chinese inverter manufacturer is carefully evaluating the possibility of opening a new factory outside of China. Such a factory would assemble inverters, with parts imported from China.

Separately, Sungrow said it has reached 9 GW of total delivered capacity to South America, with 6 GW of the total delivered to Brazil alone. It said about 3 GW in Brazil were delivered for utility-scale PV projects, with central inverters accounting for a 70% share of the market, and string inverters accounting for the remainder.

“We think that in the next five years Brazil will continue to be in the top five of PV markets worldwide. The biggest growth will be in distribution generation, for the residential segment,” said Li.

For Sungrow, financing is still the most challenging aspect of working in the Brazilian PV market.

“We see one restriction for demand – not so much module prices, but bank interest rates here in Brazil,” Li said. “This is the main issue.”

Brazil’s baseline interest rate currently sits at 13.75%, leaving its PV market sensitive to the capex of solar projects. Public and private credit lines with more attractive interest rates have been created to incentivize the installation of solar.

Beyond Brazil, Sungrow is currently looking at Chile for utility-scale storage, and Mexico for commercial and industrial (C&I).

*This article has been amended. The location of the factory was initially indicated by the company as North America, but it has since specified it is evaluating locations outside of China.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.