Due to popular demand, SMAs Sunny PRO Cluba membership-based professional partnership program for solar installershas extended its Regional Forums through 2012. This year, its slate of technical training, hands-on product workshops and informative presentations was expanded to include micro-string hybrid photovoltaic (PV) systems, SMAs monitoring and off-grid inverter product lines and SMA Service. Sixteen eventsfree with pre-registrationare already planned for select cities throughout the U.S. and Canada this year, with the first scheduled for Raleigh, N.C. on January 24.
"Regional Forums allow Sunny PRO Club members and non-members to participate in exclusive educational opportunities from SMA," said Ciara Wakefield, Sunny PRO Club manager for SMA America and SMA Canada. "In addition to learning more about SMA products and their uses in residential and commercial PV systems, Regional Forum attendees can also gather information about the technical and marketing resources available to Sunny PRO Club members." Each Regional Forum includes technical training sessions by the SMA Solar Academy. The Boost Your Profits: Best Practices for Residential Design training session provides an overview of toolssuch as SMAs Sunny Design and Solarchecker softwarethat help installers optimize their PV systems.
Another training session, Grow Your Business: Commercial Systems Made Easy, explains how installers can apply their existing experience and knowledge in the residential market to expand into small commercial applications through decentralized PV system concepts. Monitoring Makes Cents: Increase Profitability and Performance through Communications introduces the SMA family of monitoring systems, with particular emphasis on how to set up and use the Sunny Portal to track multiple arrays.
Information about island and battery-backup systems for residential and commercial applications is included in the session entitled The Gold Standard in Off-Grid and Battery Management Systems: Sunny Island Technical Overview. Finally, A New Standard in Residential Inverters: Sunny Boy HF is a hands-on workshop that now includes information about micro-string hybrid systems, as well as a sneak peek of SMAs upcoming Sunny Boy 240 micro inverter. Rounding out the Regional Forum schedule are presentations by the SMA Service and Sunny PRO Club teams. SMA Service offers priority technical support for Sunny PRO Club members.
Regional Forum attendees can learn more about these services, as well as have exclusive access to SMA Service personnel. During the Sunny PRO Club presentation, attendees can learn how their market effectiveness and sales can improve through exclusive technical benefits and discounted custom marketing support materials. There also is a panel discussion with SMA Sales, Service, Solar Academy and Sunny PRO Club representatives.
