While the Swiss manufacturer Sputnik Engineering has mostly sold central inverters for free-standing systems to Spain in the last few years, since mid-2009 the Solar Max string inverters have become a new best-seller.

Biel , 18 November 2009. Since the middle of 2009, fitters have increasingly installed PV plants on industrial roofs in Spain , a set up which demands smaller inverters. The new Royal Decree, RD 1578/2008 caps the additional construction of photovoltaic plants and, in particular, reduces the number of large free-standing systems. “We have a large spectrum of inverters with outputs from 1.8 kilowatts up to 1 megawatt and have been established on the Spanish market for quite a while. Therefore, we were able to adapt to the new requirements without any problems”, explains Fernando Sánchez García, managing director of Sputnik’s Spanish subsidiary, Sputnik Engineering Ibérica S.L.U.

One of his customers alone, Sofos Solar from Lleida, plans to build 30 PV plants with SolarMax string inverters in the coming six to nine months. The largest of them will have an output of 350 kilowatts. “Sputnik Engineering is a reliable company, and we trust the SolarMax brand”, explains Sofos Solar managing director Juan Mayoral. “Sputnik’s string inverters convinced us due to their technical specifications, their good value for money as well as the 12-year extended warranty. In addition, Sputnik has set up an excellent infrastructure in Spain and offers comprehensive service and support”. In the last few months, Sofos Solar has already built ten PV plants with outputs between 8.8 kilowatts and 100 kilowatts, all using SolarMax string inverters.

Fernando Sánchez looks forward to the continued development of the Spanish solar market. “2009 has been a difficult year for the entire PV business. Besides the falling module prices and the credit crunch, installations in this country have also been hampered by bureaucratic hurdles”. For these reasons, the Spanish boss anticipates the additional construction of photovoltaics in his home country to reach a total of only 150-200 megawatts in 2009. Since the second half of this year, however, things have been improving significantly. “Thanks to the solid customer agreements we have, I am very optimistic about 2010,” he says.

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