While undoubtedly facing fierce competition from foreign and domestic inverter suppliers, SMA has staked its claim as the largest inverter supplier to the North America PV markets. With estimates of solar capacity across the U.S., Canada and Mexico coming in at 22 GW, SMA now claims to have supplied 7.5 GW of that, or one-third of the total installed base.
SMA entered North America nearly 15 years ago and we are proud to have created hundreds of new jobs here, said SMA CEO Pierre-Pascal Urbon, in a statement. SMA has a long-standing commitment to this market and we will continue to produce high-quality inverters and to serve local PV designers, installers, developers, owners and EPCs well into the future.
SMA operates its North American sales and service operations out of Grass Valley, California and has a production facility in Denver. When founded in 2009, the Denver manufacturing based was the second largest inverter manufacturing plant in the world. SMA has since added a U.S. Technology Group and Solar Monitoring Center at the Denver site.
Despite this towering market share and local operations, some market analysts remain skeptical of SMAs outlook in the U.S. market. With new entrants such electronics giant Huawei pushing hard into the space, Renewable Analytics recently reported that SMA is rapidly losing market share.
Huawei is ramping up in all segments of the market and we expect them to be extremely aggressive on pricing, wrote Renewable Analytics in a recent market note. ABB is likely to lose share in residential, but SMA is in really bad shape in residential. Share loss is rampant.
Renewable Analytics estimates that supplying the utility scale market now comprises more than 50% of SMAs revenues in the U.S. market.
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