Micro Inverter Market Review

Total Market Size - $2B

• Centralized inverters are virtually all the market today
• Micro Inverters less than 1% but growing fast, more so in the buzz

Players in the Micro Inverter market

• Enphase energy, Petaluma CA - First to production, 100k sold, thought leader; $15M in June 2008/$22.5M in 2009
  
• SMA - Centralized inverter leader; Bought OKE to productize micro inverters
  
• Accurate Solar, Menlo Park, CA - Focus on commercial scale projects
• Azuray - Tualatin, CA - Production target - June 2010, 96% efficiency
  
• Direct Grid - Edgewood, NY - Launched Sep 09, "patent‐pending, closed loop MOSFET planar
  micro‐inverter design made specifically for thin‐film type PV modules. The cost effective
  solution significantly increases micro‐inverter reliability and efficiency"; roadmap - communications for theft control and remote monitoring; rollout - initially through OEMs
  
• Enecsys - Cambridge, UK - me-too compared to other inverters; $10M in funding
  
• GreenRay Solar - Westford, MA - "Solar Appliance" to enable ease of installation, includes inverter; $2M in funding
  
• Larankelo - Colorado Springs, CO - Dormant, seeking funding
  
• Petra Solar - South Plainfield, NJ - Utility focused with pole-mounted solar system as the primary product
  
• SolarBridge - Champaigne, IL - Uses film capacitor with better reliability than electolytic capacitors; Plans to offer 25 year warranty; $6M raised and looking for more
• SolarEdge - Israel - SolarEdge three-fold architecture consists of PowerBoxes™ performing module-level MPPT, a highly reliable inverter, and a web portal for module-level monitoring and fault detection; Powerbox does mppt and voltage mgmt only, no dc to ac conversion; Partnership agreements with module manufacturers and integrators in Europe, USA and Japan, which provide SolarEdge technology alongside their current services; $23MM in new funding
• Array Converter - Sunnyvale, CA - Self funded;
  
• Sympagis (EIQ ?) - San Jose, CA - Unlike microinverter-based wiring technology, the Parallel Solar approach creates a DC bus that operates at a constant high voltage, allowing an installation’s DC-to-AC conversion to be handled by a single central inverter operating in its most efficient range. This approach means there is only one inverter connection to the outside power grid, rather than hundreds or thousands—greatly reducing the need for connection monitoring and management; Joint marketing with Signet Solar
  

Articles

• Why Micro Inverters ?