Sungrow, Huawei and Sineng Electric were the leading suppliers of solar inverters for the Indian solar market in calendar year (CY) 2020. This emerges from the India Solar Market Leaderboard 2021 report recently published by Mercom.
The latest report from Mercom offers an insight into the market shares and shipping rankings of the industry leaders in the Indian solar supply chain.
The three largest companies accounted for 56% of the total market share in fiscal year 2020. The five largest suppliers of solar inverters accounted for almost 80% of all inverter deliveries to the country in 2020.
String inverter
String inverters have made rapid strides in the Indian solar market over the past two years. In the string inverter category, Huawei was the leader with a 37% market share, closely followed by Sungrow and Growatt with 19% and 13% respectively. Other names on the list include Goodwe and Solis.
Central inverter
Central inverters made up about 51% of the total shipments. Sungrow, Sineng Electric and FIMER India (formerly ABB) were the top suppliers with 29%, 26% and 20% respectively. Kehua Tech and TMEIC were the other leading providers on the list.
Sungrow, FIMER and Sineng Electric were the top inverter suppliers in the first half of the 2020 financial year.
In the 2021 budget, the finance minister proposed raising the tariff on solar inverters from 5% to 20% to encourage domestic production. The government believes that increasing tariffs and increasing import costs will incentivize manufacturers to manufacture in India. With the growing demand for inverters, Chinese manufacturers, including Sungrow and TBEA, have already opened manufacturing facilities in India.
In December last year, Mercom hosted a webinar that discussed how solar inverter technologies are affecting project performance. The webinar sheds light on the technological trends that are driving the market and how Indian developers decide which inverters to use for their projects. Although inverters account for 5% of the total project cost, their impact on project performance, stability and balanced energy costs are significant, making quality and technology the most important factors. Developers who attended the webinar commented that bifacial modules with string inverters are the future trend.
For a full list of inverter suppliers and their market shares, see Mercom's India Solar Market Share Tracker.
Rakesh is a reporter at Mercom India. Before joining Mercom, he held many roles as business correspondent, editorial assistant, senior content writer and editor at bcfocus.com, CIOReview / Silicon India, Connect Communication and Bangalore Bias. Rakesh holds a bachelor's degree in English from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). More articles from Rakesh Ranjan.