Search4Solar visited the Intersolar fair in Munich last week where more than 1450 exhibitors stood on 132.000m2. With this the fair has become the most important industry platform for manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, service providers and partners of the solar industry in Europe. Search4Solar has looked at novelties and where the market in its entirety is headed. Below you will find a brief report.
At the Intersolar it was noticeable that solar panel formats keep getting bigger, a couple of brands dominate the market such as Longi, Trina, Jinko, Risen and Ja solar. These Tier 1 brands are providing the market with outputs of 550 Wp to sometimes even 600 Wp. These bigger project modules are mainly applied in other countries. In The Netherlands the sale of solar energy keeps growing, while we mainly used 375 Wp all black last year, we will be moving up to 395 Wp or 400 Wp all black.
In terms of inverters, you see that they are increasingly suitable for use as a hybrid form in combination with a battery. The market for batteries in the Netherlands is still growing and as soon as the netting scheme is adjusted or expires, more batteries will come onto the market in the Netherlands. You hear from various distributors everywhere that the shortages in stock will not be solved in the coming months, but the entire industry is working on scaling up and producing more volume.
As Search4Solar we also visited a number of halls where smart charging solutions were presented. Now that more and more people are driving electric, the demand for charging solutions will increase and smarter solutions will be introduced to generate energy in homes or offices and used it in a smart way. The car will also play an important role in terms of energy storage.
The various mounting manufacturers were again admired in large numbers at the fair. We also visited Van der Valk Solar Systems, a leading company that continues to innovate and has to adapt its systems as solar panel sizes continue to change and grow. Older sizes as we know them from the 60-cell solar panels are actually no longer present and we are left with modules that have larger dimensions.