In November, the inverter manufacturer SMA Solar announced the dismantling of up to 1100 jobs worldwide, now it is becoming concrete: Since February 10, the employees of the North Hessian company have been able to report to a so-called volunteer program, which for an exit from the employment contract provides. SMA Solar still employs around 3,250 employees at the headquarters in Niestetal near Kassel, there are more than 4,000 worldwide. “Our goal is still to keep the dismantling as low as possible,” wrote the works council chairman Martin Breul on F.A.Z. SMA Solar suffered a bitter setback last year. After the Russian attack on Ukraine raised the demand for photovoltaic systems in 2022 and 2023, profit broke in the first three quarters in 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year. Get new production facility into operation: SMA Gigawatt Factory is the name of the new production hall, in which components for large ones in the future Solar power plants are manufactured. SMA Solar is now putting all hope in the delivery of major customers. While private homeowners and smaller companies put investments in solar systems in the face of high inflation rates and weakening economy last year, the demand for energy groups and other large companies rose for entire power plants or large energy storage. According to SMA, the new product Sunny Central Flex, which is to be manufactured in the Gigawatt Factory, can facilitate the integration of renewable energies into the power grids. To convert household. They also feed the electricity into the public network. In the event of security problems, you can separate the solar system from the network. Via communication interfaces, you can also collect data about the yields and devices connected to the system. SMA Solar therefore also offers software packages for the Control Panel. Inverters would be used for this. Another application that should gain in importance in the future are systems for the production of hydrogen. During the interior of the home use, SMA is involved in the partly wardrobe -sized devices for solar power plants or large storage systems for individual customer requirements. The company hopes for advantages in an industry that is dominated by Chinese manufacturers. In the case of interverters, their market power is not quite as overwhelming as in solar modules, but still enormous: According to Wood Mackenzie-an analysis house that specializes in data on renewable energies-is the market share of the Chinese inverter manufacturers worldwide. .Weix suspects state subsidies behind it. The Asians would “bring products to the market at prices that cannot be economical for them,” he criticizes. Beyond this, the advance of Chinese inverter in Europe can become a security risk. The manufacturers could remotely control them on the Internet: “Exaggerated, the plug can be drawn at some point.” Hope for support from the politics of the topic of politics already concerned: The Federal Ministry of Economics confirmed in December at the request of the CDU MP Anne König that “manufacturer In most cases, online access options are also reserved for their products for operational reasons or in the prospect of their products or their customers are in prospect of benefits for such access options place”. This applies “also to Chinese manufacturers”, wrote State Secretary Philipp Nimmermann. A Federal Government’s draft law on the change in energy management law addresses “Questions of IT security in such systems”. The law, which has now been adopted by the Bundestag, stipulates that the Federal Ministry of Economics, together with the Interior Ministry, can affect rules to protect the reliability of measurement and control facilities- this also includes inverters. The debate is reminiscent of the discussion about Chinese components for the latest mobile radio generation 5G. This ended with the fact that elements from Huawei and the smaller Chinese manufacturer ZTE should no longer be used for the 5G core network. According to the Federal Network Agency, “a ban on individual IT components” would also also be possible in critical areas of the energy sector-but whether it will come, but still seems completely open. So SMA Solar cannot rely on political support against the competition from Asia. When announcing the job cut in November, the board described the situation in the particularly price -sensitive market for small to medium -sized systems as “very challenging”. The incisions are necessary “in order to continue to grow profitably in the future.” The company, founded in 1981, also suffered tart losses in 2013, after a reduction in state solar funding in 2012. Dennis Weix has survived – he has been working for SMA Solar since he started training as an electronics technician at the company. Today he is 38 and says: “21 years in the photovoltaic industry in Germany feel like 50 years of working life.” But so far it has always been uphill after every setback.
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