Ikea will start selling PV systems in five stores in Germany starting in October. The offer “Solstrale” will initially be distributed in the furniture stores in Kaarst, Eching, Walldorf, Ulm and Freiburg, said the Swedish furniture company on Thursday.
A complete turnkey 2.2 kW PV system will have a minimum price of €4,730 including VAT. An Ikea spokeswoman told pv magazine that the offer includes polycrystalline solar modules from Canadian Solar and SolaX inverters. The “Solstrale Plus” offer, which is available from €5,075, includes monocrystalline solar modules from JA Solar and also SolaX inverters. For flat roofs, there will initially be no PV offers, the company said.
Optionally, a battery storage from LG Chem can be purchased. The models Resu 3.3, 6.5., 10 are offered. The price of the home storage system is currently unknown. Ikea offers a product warranty of 10 years for modules, inverters and battery storage. In addition, the offer includes an installation warranty for the PV system for six years.
In Germany, the furniture company continues to work with Solarcentury. The British EPC company is currently in the process of setting up a German subsidiary, Solarcentury Microgen (Deutschland) GmbH, which will run the business, said the spokeswoman.
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The Swedish furniture company had previously looked for a German company as a partner, but then decided to expand its cooperation with Solarcentury, with which it already cooperates in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium. “We examined the market intensively for the best in order to provide less expensive alternative for our customers,” explained Armin Michaely, sustainability manager Ikea Germany.
The “Solstrale” offer will be distributed during the test phase in specially appointed outlets in the five stores. From February 2019, a nationwide offer is planned. It will then be available online to all customers via the Ikea website.
Having entered the solar space four years ago in the abovementioned markets, Ikea added storage to its product mix in 2017. pv magazine caught up with Signe Antvorskov Krag, Global Development Leader Ikea Home Solar Business this July to discuss business models, its role in the industry, and how it intends to execute the next stage of its plan: energy communities.
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Back in time all these small discounters for computer pieces spread across the cities …
The reason was that the computers assembled by big chains were too expensive and with regard to performance inferior …
IKEA or whoever could sell nowadays 300+W-Mono-PERCmodules for 99€ incl VAT in Germany with a decent double digit margin …
Combined with a quality module inverter (including cables) they would end up at about 199€ probalby – or for one inverter with two modules @ 299€.
That means about 50cent/Wp for a plugin package of 600W
… buy 4 packages and you end up at 2.4kW @1200€ …
… so there seems to be still a huge gap to what IKEA is asking for …
… plenty of room for the small discounters in the solar arena – as in the days back in the 90’s when computer’s ad parts got cheap and performance increased exponentialy …