Photovoltaik-Institut Berlin (PI) acquires Solarbuyer

The Photovoltaik-Institute Berlin (PI Berlin) announced it will acquire 100% of U.S. company Solarbuyer as of Jan. 1, 2018.

The merger is aimed at jointly offering inspection services in production, in laboratories and on the open space within an integrated approach in the U.S. for the first time, the company said in press release on Monday.

PI Berlin, which has been testing and evaluating the module quality for solar power plants for more than ten years through laboratory tests and inspections, wants to gain a foothold in the U.S. market through this transaction. Solarbuyer's customers, in turn, would benefit from the testing capabilities of the laboratories of PI Berlin in Germany and China.

Solarbuyer has been providing risk management and quality assurance services to investors and buyers of PV products since 2011. The specialist in manufacturing quality of modules and inverters has so far reported more than 230 factory audits, corresponding to a production capacity of 62 GW. Fault-finding in the factory and thus before the shipment should avoid an expensive replacement of the PV components in the field. Solarbuyer is active in 16 countries on five continents, especially in the U.S. and China. For the technical risk evaluation of the individual manufacturers, SolarBuyer has developed its own rating system.

“In the future, we can offer investors and project developers the assurance of material and manufacturing quality from a single source – this integrated service is unique in the PV industry,” said Solarbuyer’s founder Peter Rusch. He will head global sales at PI Berlin starting in January. The other Solarbuyer founder Ian Gregory will continue to work in the company and hold the position of General Manager USA. In the future, the European Solarbuyer team and EMEA sales will be controlled by the Berlin headquarters of PI Berlin. The US team is still sitting in Marlborough, Massachusetts.