Solar Future Strategy Conference Let’s talk about PV-inverters 8. June 2010

Christoph von Bergen, CEO, Sputnik Engineering AG

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Agenda

 About Sputnik Engineering AG

 Technology Trends ■ Efficiency ■ Quality ■ Lessons from other sectors

 Market ■ Applications

■ For special conditions ■ Standard residential plant ■  Industrial roof and land projects

■ Grid parity needs more grid management ■ Price ■ Inverter shortage

 Conclusion

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About Sputnik Engineering AG

Founded 1991

Based in Biel / Bienne, Switzerland (Head Office)

Subsidiaries in Germany

Spain

Italy

France

Sales Offices Czech Republic, Belgium

Employees 330

and more than 400 outsourced jobs in exclusive partner companies

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Sputnik Engineering

Annual Installed Capacity in Megawatts MWac

Annual increase in MWac Expected annual increase in MWac

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Products

Product Portfolio

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Products

Product Portfolio

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Technology Trends

New technologies have to improve continuously the 3 key aspects:

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Technology Trends

 Revolution or Evolution?  Currently we can not see revolutionary trends (technology jumps)  Evolution and continuous improvement is in the focus

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Technology Trends

 In the context of inverters everybody is talking about efficiency?

 Is efficiency strategically the key driver?   In the future, the efficiency values of different

manufacturers will assimilate  High efficiency is important, but will become

mandatory  The differentiation potential is decreasing

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Technology Trends: Efficiency

SolarMax S, 1994: Sputnik introduced the

first TL-inverter into the market

SolarMax E-Series, efficiency jump

SolarMax MT Series, 3-Level, SiC diodes

SolarMax showing up with state of the art inverters

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Technology Trends: Quality

All efforts and investments in product quality will increase the reliability. In general the inverter reliability has the biggest impact to the performance ratio of the entire PV-installation. Why?   An inverter is built with more than thousand components   The integrated microcontrollers (DSP) contain several

hundred pages of source code.   Rough electrical conditions at the AC-side

(bursts, spikes, etc.)   A breakdown by the PV-inverter mainly causes a total

breakdown for the entire PV-installation

SolarMax 6000S (String inverter: 4600 Wac) contains 1227 components.

SolarMax 100 TS (Central inverter: 100 kWac) contains 3199 components.

The importance of the product quality for PV-inverters is underestimated so far.

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Technology Trends: Quality

 Reliable evaluation of product quality needs operation experience with an adequate installed base of test units during a significant period of time.

 This is not easy to achieve, therefore only a few reports related to this topic were published yet.

  Is Mean-Time-Between-Failure (MTBF) a good benchmark to evaluate reliability/ quality?

//

Normal life “Infant mortality”

End of life

Wear-out

First month First year 15 years 16 years Operating time

  MTBF calculations are only valid for the constant „normal life“-phase   In this phase MTBF values up to several 100 years are possible

  What does MTBF have to do with lifetime?

Nothing at all!

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Technology Trends: Quality

We strongly believe that product quality will be strategically important for the future success of our company. For that reason we will invest even more in the relevant business processes:

  R&D (reliable designs, extensive field tests)

  Purchasing (Supplier evaluation & controlling)

  Production (Testing & quality checks)

  After-Sales (Fast reaction time on-site or via helpdesk)

  Quality management (up to date reports about all inverter- failures to manage a continuous improvement)

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Technology Trends

 Lessons from other sectors  Higher voltages

 1500 VDC

  690 VAC

 Optimizing overall system performance

 Smart grids and power management

Source: Cleanfuture™ and Portlant State University

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Market trend

Applications

  Non-homogeneous applications / critical conditions  DC-DC converter or micro inverter

(Revival from the 90’s)  Advantages due to multiple trackers (e.g. BiPV)  More components: higher costs and lower quality  Working under rough ambient conditions

(coldness/heat, humidity)  Extensive to monitor and to exchange (BiPV)  Quality and economics will decide on the success

From 1995 to 1997 Our 160 Wac Micro-Inverter mounted at the back side of a 200Wp PV-module. We run field tests with 500 pieces.

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Market trend

Applications

  Small plants and standard residential applications  String inverters

 Good price performance ratio   Inverter location can be selected in a for

electronics reasonable environment and customer accessibility

 Likely mainstream solution for the next years

Top of Europe (Jungfraujoch)

Highest PV installation in the world, 3,500 m. above sea level. Start-up 01/2008

Devices: 4xSM3000S

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Market trend

Applications

  Industrial roof / land projects  Central inverters

 Optimized for higher voltages  Best price performance ratio  Reduced quantity of components as a

basis for less break-downs  All-In-Solutions are available - ready

to connect with MV-grid

Largest PV installation in France

La Réunion, 4.4 megawatts. Start-up 2006/2007

Devices: 1xSM300C, 7xSM100C, 1xSM80C, 2xSM35C, 2xSM30C, 2xSM25C, 1xSM20C

Standards for PV inverters

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Main Categories

Product safety

EN 50178 (Europe)

UL 1741 (North America)

EMC

IEC/EN „61000 series“

Grid connection & protection

VDE 0126-1-1 (Parts of Europe)

BDEW MV-Guideline (Germany)

RD1663 (Spain)

DK5940 (Italy)

G83/1 (UK)

IEEE 1547 (North America)

And many more…

Standards for PV inverters

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Each country and/or region has its own standards for PV-inverters ...

Grid parity needs more grid management

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With the large amounts of unpredictable renewable energies the grid operators have new challenges for the grid management. They easiest access for monitoring and control of the whole installation is through the PV-inverter. The utilities must have the possibility to control the PV-installation.  Power reduction  Reactive power  Fault ride through (FRT)

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Cost Reduction

What brings the cost down:

  Economies of scale  Higher purchasing volumes  New production processes   Internationalization of inverters to increase market

volume   Smart design/ topology   Integration of discrete elements  Less components

  New components  SiC Diodes, DSP, etc

  Higher efficiencies   reducing cost for cooling and housing

  Harmonisation of standards  Clean the standard-jungle to a reasonable size

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Price development

Average price development of string inverters

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Shortage

Our Capacity Utilization

Component Shortage

PV-Market Recovery

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Shortage

What are our bottlenecks?  Capacitors and inductors  Delivery time: up to 50 weeks

 Power semiconductors (IGBT, MOSFet)  Delivery time: up to 20 weeks

 Semiconductors (DSP)  Delivery time: up to 18 – 26 weeks

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Shortage

The electronic component shortage is worldwide existent and it is a reaction of the recovering global electronics market.

Worldwide turnover ($ bn) 2008 delta 2009 delta 2010 Electronic components 398 -16% 332 +7% 356 PV-inverter sales 2.5 +20% 3 +27% 3.8 PV-inverter demand share 0.3% 0.45% 0.53%

PV-inverters have still an insignificant effect and influence on the global electronics market.

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Conclusion

Our strategic approaches:

Flexibility  Close to the customer, feel market needs  Short time to market for new products  Flexible production following the market changes

  High quality in products and processes  Excellent After-Sales services

  Cost awareness  Keep costs down  Lean management

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Sputnik Engineering

We make a considerable contribution to the development of photovoltaics, combining customer benefit and environmental protection. With the SolarMax brand, we are one of the leading manufacturers of high-quality photovoltaic inverters. We are among the TOP 3 manufacturers worldwide.

Our customers choose our products, because they trust our many years of experience and our Swiss quality and because we are leaders in the field of after-sales. In all their dealings with us, customers feel our open and customer-oriented business culture. We place great value on long-term and trusting cooperation with our partners.

We are and will remain a financially independent company.

Vision

The End – thank you very much for your attention.