If you want to ask, who is the leader of the global photovoltaic inverter industry?
It is estimated that many people do not know that the answer is actually Huawei.
In 2011, Huawei quietly entered the field of photovoltaic inverters from the communication equipment and consumer electronics industries, relying on its technological advantages in the electronic information industry, and for the first time in the research of IGBT modules, it used low-voltage driving technology to control high-power and high-speed switching.
With this "black technology", Huawei has greatly reduced manufacturing costs. In 2015, Huawei ranked first in the global photovoltaic inverter market, and has continued to this day.
Within Huawei, some business units are called "legions", such as coal mine legions, data center energy legions, intelligent highway legions and so on. At the end of 2021, with the increase of business volume at that time, Huawei established the "Intelligent Photovoltaic Corps".
Although the "legion" department and the three main industries belong to the same level, compared with mobile phones, telecommunications equipment, and even the popular new energy vehicles, Huawei Photovoltaic is extremely secret.
Even against the background of the explosive growth of the photovoltaic industry as a whole, Huawei Photovoltaic, which is all-powerful in the industry, is still little known to the outside world.
From integrating its mature telecommunications technology into new energy, breaking the shackles of key components, becoming the first brother in the industry, to the layout of smart photovoltaic, Huawei's hidden and huge photovoltaic business empire, it is difficult to keep a low profile.
01
Huawei's photovoltaic
business sector, which is rarely noticed.
Thanks to the excellent power information technology and the vigorous development of the European photovoltaic market, European enterprises have always occupied the dominant position of photovoltaic inverters.
German SMA is the absolute overlord from the late 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century. From 2007 to 2011, the global market share of its inverters remained above 30% all the year round.
But since then, SMA has encountered the cost war launched by Sunshine Power Supply and the technology war launched by Huawei. In 2014, Huawei entered the market with string inverters, and the cost of technology iteration continued to decline. Chinese enterprises are expanding their territory in the world.
However, European enterprises with high cost of labor, raw materials and other factors can no longer cope with it. Since 2019, SMA has been defeated in China, announcing that it will stop operating in China and sell all its shares in China to local management.
In 2021, the global inverter market was dominated by Chinese-funded enterprises, with Huawei, Sunshine Power, Guruiwatt and Jinlang occupying the top four, grabbing 57% of the market share. Among them, Huawei continued to rank first with 23%.
You know, Huawei only planned to take a look at photovoltaic opportunities in 2011, and four years later it soared to the first place in the world, and has won the championship for seven consecutive years (no public data has yet been released in 2022).
In addition to the speed of attack, Huawei's entry into the photovoltaic inverter industry from the ICT field, and breaking the Red Sea competition through technology iteration, leading the development of the industry, is more interesting.
In 2011, there was a price war in the industry. At that time, Sunshine Power raised the price butcher's knife by virtue of only 56% of SMA's cost advantage. Over the next three years, the average price of centralized inverters plummeted by nearly 70%, from 0.8 yuan/W to 0.25 yuan/W, and the competition in the Red Sea intensified. The profitability of
players continues to shrink. The gross profit margin of SMA has been maintained at a high level of about 37% until 2013, which is only 16%. Sunshine Power is no exception. The gross profit margin has dropped from 50% in 2010 to 24% in 2013.
At this time, Huawei pioneered the string inverter in 2014, and released ± 1500V bipolar intelligent string products in 2021.
Compared with centralized power generation, string power generation has higher efficiency, longer power generation time, higher voltage, lower operation and maintenance costs and failure rate. String products make Huawei create a blue sea from the Red Sea. Nowadays, string solutions have become the absolute mainstream of the industry. Organizations believe that Huawei's design originality is more than two years ahead of other competitors.
Now, Huawei has begun to carry out new material research and laid out the second generation of silicon carbide, which will bring about new changes in the size of IGBT, capacitor, inductor, resistor, PCBA and so on. Huawei, which has strong scientific and technological strength, is expected to build a deeper moat.
Earlier, Huawei Photovoltaic Corps revealed that its "global shipments of inverters exceed 52 GW in 2021, and global shipments of energy storage systems exceed 2 GWh."
We should know that the new installed capacity of photovoltaic in the world this year is only 133 GW (data from the International Renewable Energy Agency). Although there is no shipment data for 2022, Huawei is still in the leading position in the industry according to the bidding results of some major projects. The attack of
photovoltaic plate is also a strategic deployment of Huawei to deal with the international technology blockade.
浙公网安备33010802003254号