Not related to your request but a nice article from Barron’s on competition between SEDG and EHPH (From Nov 3, but I don’t think it was previously posted).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/contest-to…
Enphase and SolarEdge are the two biggest suppliers of inverters for U.S. rooftop systems – a critical yet unheralded component. They’re generally seen as the brains of a system and account for as much as a third of the total cost. The two companies are locked in a technology battle, offering competing approaches and racing to lower prices. They’ll both report results this week, and the numbers will help crown a winner.
And SEDG was the winner.
“The weakest link in a solar system is the inverter, and it’s a big part of the cost,”…
An inverter is essentially a box full of magnets and wires that converts the direct current electricity that flows from solar panels into the alternating current that’s sent across the grid…
inverter market is on track to increase 15 percent to $7.3 billion this year, and another 9 percent in 2016 to $8 billion, according to GTM Research…
The company to watch is SolarEdge, which is expected to become the top inverter supplier for U.S. rooftops this year, surpassing incumbent Enphase, according to GTM. …
…growth stems from a design that the company says makes it cheaper than products from Enphase.
SolarEdge introduced a new inverter at the Solar Power International conference in Anaheim, California, in September, that Lior Handelsman, co-founder and vice president of marketing, said reduces weight and uses digital processing to improve performance.
in the quarter that ended in June, Enphase sold inverters for an average of about 52 cents a watt, compared to SolarEdge’s average price of about 35 cents a watt,
Ouch, said Enphase shareholders.
Enphase has lost 76 percent of its market value this year through Monday
Ouch, said Enphase shareholders again.
In 2008 Enphase introduced a cell phone sized inverter to replace the printer sized inverters in use. (One per panel versus 1 per group, which can lead to large failures)
In 2012, Solaredge went to a single centralized inverter, but then gave each panel and small optimizer that allowed monitoring and control and also meant that one panel failure did not take out the whole system.
“SolarEdge is definitely gaining market share from Enphase in the U.S. residential market,” said Scott Moskowitz, an analyst at GTM Research in New York. “Pricing is a big part of that. SolarEdge has been able to prove their system lowers overall costs.”
All sounds great, still worried about the end of subsidies Dec 2016. I guess if the Dems get the Prez and the Repubs keep the legislature, then some compromise to pass a budget bill could renew them, but if the Republicans win the Prez, it would be a long bet on renewal.
(Not trying to start a political discussion, just trying to be realistic).