Energetica India nº91 July August 2020

Lisa Zhang Marketing Director, Growatt “Solar + storage as well as smart energy management and energy efficiency is the future for solar PV. Solar storage has been growing robustly in Europe and Australia. We’ve launched the GroHome solution including, smart meter, smart switch, smart thermostat.” E nergetica I ndia : Being an experienced player in string inverters, how the year 2020 has been so far for Growatt amid Covid-19? Strategy to tackle? L isa Z hang : Though the pandemic has huge impact on the world, we are seeing growth in global shipments compared with 2019. In China, the solar market was restored in the second quarter and has shown impressive growth. Our shipments in China in Q2 are three times of that in Q1. We are seeing the biggest impact in the Americas while in Europe, where we have huge advantages, our shipments are not affected. Some markets in Europe such as Poland even report big growth. In APAC, few markets are impacted, but these markets take less percentage of our shipments. Our sales in Australia is not affected. The utility-scale market is the worst hit segment, but as we are focusing on the distributed generation market, the impact on DG is very limited. However, the pandemic has hindered the development of solar energy, but we be- lieve it’ll get better. There’re good oppor- tunities and the global demand is strong. E nergetica I ndia : Tell us something about your latest technology inverter offerings for the customers. L isa Z hang : Among the inverter manu- facturers, Growatt offers the most com- prehensive PV solutions. We provide solutions for residential, commercial, ground-mounted, storage and off-grid solar, and the power capacity covers the range from 1kW to 253kW. E nergetica I ndia : Do you have some investment or expansion plans in near term? L isa Z hang : We are now building a new manufacturing plant that covers an area of 200,000 square meters, incorporating an administrative office, staff dormito - Energetica India catches up with Lisa Zhang, Marketing Director, Growatt to know more about her company’s strategy amid Covid-19 scenario, new product offerings, expansion & invest- ment plans etc. 16 energetica INDIA- July-Aug_2020 INTERVIEW