E.ON, Sungevity announce plans for German solar market

PV Magazine

The two companies announced last June their plans to work together in the Netherlands as a first step towards European market expansion. Now they are entering the German PV market.

“Germany is one of the world’s leading solar markets and extending our partnership with E.ON there is another exciting move for us,” commented Andrew Birch, CEO of Sungevity. “It also speaks strongly to our legacy of building partnerships with like-minded organizations to make solar power a more viable solution for energy consumers around the world.”

Utilizing the Californian company’s software solutions, PV plants in Germany can expect to be better planned, while production performance can be calculated without the need for onsite inspection. Specifically, time consuming site visits for surveying roofs can be dispensed with.

E.ON said that pilot regions will be located in and around Munich and Berlin. Based on a household’s energy consumption, the new service calculates the predicted hours of sunshine for the customer, as well evaluating aerial photographs and images of the building, sun orientation and available roof area, explained E.ON CEO, Robert Hienz. He added that it additionally gauges the profits to be expected and how much of the generated electricity can be used by the household.

The control system also dynamically regulates the amount of electricity for both self-consumption and feed-in, which will help to increase the overall performance of the PV system and shorten the payback periods. Overall, the implementation of Sungevity’s software could see deployment of PV more streamlined and cost effective.

Under the new partnership, all customers should receive a guarantee under their contracts for the forecasted energy production in kilowatt hours over a ten year period. If the PV system generates less energy, the difference will reportedly be insured by E.ON, thus reducing financial risk for its consumers.

Source: PV Magazine. Reproduced with permission.