According to Wood Mackenzie’s “2020 global PV inverter supplier market rankings” released in June, global PV inverter shipments surged to 185GW (AC) in 2020, an increase of more than 40% year on year. Huawei, Sunshine Power, and SMA firmly occupy the top three market-leading positions in terms of shipments, while Power Electronics still ranks fourth. At the same time, the proportion of supplier concentration is also increasing, with the TOP10 PV inverter suppliers accounting for 80% of the market share, with a year-on-year growth of 4%.
It should be noted that the statistics in this paper are compiled by Wood Mackenzie in terms of total AC MW, excluding the revenue ranking of inverter suppliers, based on the shipment data, market, and project open information provided by each company. If there is an error with the actual shipment amount of the enterprise, it is for reference only.
2020 global pv inverter shipments TOP10
Six of the world’s top 10 inverter shipments are from Chinese suppliers. They are Huawei, Sunshine Power, Growatt, Jinlang Technology, Shangneng Electric, and Goodway. In addition, three Chinese companies, including TBEA Electric Engineering, Shouhang New Energy, and Kehua Data, also made it into the top 20. From the perspective of cumulative shipments over the years, Huawei and Sunshine Power have delivered more than 100GW, which is worthy of the name of the leading brand.
In 2020, Huawei’s global market share remained relatively stable at around 23 percent. The market share of the sunlight power supply increased to 19%. SMA’s market share fell slightly from 8% in 2019 to 7% in 2020, but it still ranked third by a wide margin.
Global key markets: Asia Pacific, Europe, and the United States have become the top three shipping markets
The Asia Pacific is clearly the largest market for inverters in 2020, with shipments of 100.92GW increasing by nearly 50% compared to 2019. China alone accounted for about 30% of global shipments. In addition, Vietnam, India market has varying degrees of growth. In this market, all of the top 10 suppliers by shipment are Chinese brands, with the exception of Famer (seventh) and SMA (ninth). Huawei, Sunshine Power, Shangneng, Jinlang, Gurivat and Goodway occupy the top six shipments. Huawei and Sunshine power alone accounted for 51 percent of the total shipments in the Asia-Pacific region.
Image: Asia Pacific Transformer Supplier Shipments by share in 2020. Source: Wood Mackenzie
The European region shipped about 33.49GW, making it the second-largest market in 2020. Shipments were up 17 percent compared with 2019. The growth was largely due to retrofitting aging photovoltaic equipment in Europe and booming key markets such as Germany and the Netherlands.
European inverter shipments ranked the top three in line with the global ranking, it should be pointed out that in 2020, the share of sunshine power supply in Europe grew very fast, up 7 places, thus ranked in the second place.
The United States ranks as the third-largest market with around 30GW of shipments. In 2020, the United States accounted for 17 percent of global inverter shipments, making it the second-largest market after China. The growth in inverter shipments can be attributed in part to the implementation of safe harbor rules and the growth of domestic PV installations.
In Latin America, where many pv projects were delayed due to the pandemic in the past year, inverter shipments reached 13.83GW, accounting for 7% of global shipments. Sunshine Power is the largest supplier of inverters in Latin America with 18% of the market. Huawei and SMA are not far behind.
The Middle East and Africa region shipped a total of 5.584GW of inverters last year, up only 2% year on year. SMA, Huawei, and Sunshine Power accounted for 29 percent, 24 percent, and 20 percent of the market respectively. The impact of COVID-19 and the collapse of international oil prices in 2020 are the main reasons for the slow growth in the region.
In 2021, the PV inverter industry will face more challenges as COVID-19 continues to recur. In the first half of this year, the inverter manufacturing industry suffered from chip shortages and raw material prices rise worldwide. Until June, the “core shortage” situation was still increasing. The delivery time of some original chips in Europe and America was as long as 26-52 weeks, and the delivery time of domestic alternative products was also not optimistic. This has caused price pressure on some manufacturers of specific models of inverters, and to a large extent, elongated the product supply cycle. In addition, soaring shipping costs and a slowdown in global PV projects due to supply chain price increases are putting pressure on inverter shipments.
However, as a number of Listed Chinese inverter companies such as Sunshine Power, Jinlang, Goodway, Kehua, and Shangeng released first-quarter financial statements, the revenue, net profit and other operating indicators of China’s major inverter enterprises have achieved relatively strong growth. Among them, sunshine power realized revenue of 3.347 billion yuan in the first quarter, up 81.24% year on year, and realized a net profit of 387 million yuan. During the same period, SMA released a first-quarter financial report showing that the inverter shipment was about 3.4GW, the sales equivalent to RMB 18.66, the business data is better than the same period last year. Although there may be slight fluctuations in the data in the second quarter, under the general trend of achieving global carbon neutrality, photovoltaic power generation is still one of the lowest-cost clean power sources. The photovoltaic manufacturing industry will also overcome short-term supply problems and achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the long term.
Original title: The global shipment of inverters in 2020 is 185GW, and Huawei, Sunshine Power, Guliwatt, Jinlang, Suneng and Goodway occupy six seats in the top ten list
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