Sungrow Joins the EASE Family: Research and Innovation for Optimal Energy Storage Solutions

The European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) is glad to extend a warm welcome to its newest member Sungrow, which joined EASE in March 2021. Mr Tony Zhang, ESS Sales Director of Sungrow Europe, accepted to discuss with us about the expertise of Sungrow, in energy storage and expectations from this collaboration with EASE.

EASE: Mr Zhang, thank you very much for accepting this interview. We are really very happy to have Sungrow among our members and we would like to know more about your activities in the sector. Could you summarise the most interesting insights from the work of Sungrow for energy storage?

Mr Zhang: Sungrow Power Supply Co., Ltd. was founded in 1997 and is the world’s most bankable inverter brand. With over 154 GW installed worldwide as of December 2020. In 2006, Sungrow ventured into the energy storage system industry, and at the moment, we are the sole ESS integrator that not only produces power conversion systems but also batteries. Sungrow is on the path to becoming the world-leader in supply of ESS equipment and integrated system solutions, with zero security incidents. In 2020, we shipped more than 800 MWh ESS worldwide, ranging from islands and high-altitude plateaus to ports and residential installations. Additionally, our team, scattered in UK, Germany, France, Spain, allows us to provide fast response to any problems arising on the project site and improve the system availability.

Sungrow is an enterprise focusing on technology innovation and devotes itself to provide the most advanced technology to our clients with the most optimal solution and most economic proposal. Currently, we have launched our DC-DC coupled solution and will release our liquid-cooling system by the end of this year. We will continue to increase investment in research and development, continually providing new products to make energy storage much more financially viable.

EASE: We look forward to a very fruitful collaboration with you and to receive Sungrow’s inputs for our Working Groups and Task Forces. What created the interest from your company to join EASE?

Mr Zhang: EASE is a very important association active in the energy storage sector and we are delighted to be a member.

We decided to join EASE because of its diverse service portfolio including the first-hand market info, the latest policy regulation, the most advanced ESS technology, on-line and off-line networking, etc. I think EU-funded projects, and the advocacy to EU regulatory and policy framework are the most essential parts to further promote the development of the energy storage industry.

Furthermore, EASE provides a good communication platform that allows us to discuss and learn all the aspects of the EU energy storage industry in our committees, working groups and give us a chance to share our company’s insights with the broader storage community.

EASE: What is your vision for how storage can contribute to the energy transition?

Mr Zhang: Energy storage plays a crucial role in the energy transition. In the past decades, the whole energy structure has been shifted from conventional fossil fuel into the clean renewable energy like PV and wind. In the meantime, one of the main problems with renewables is volatility and intermittency. The utilization of energy storage systems can effectively solve the problem by storing the excess energy into the battery at the off-peak time and discharging it at the peak time.

Apart from that, energy storage can also provide a variety of services like frequency regulation, energy arbitrage, balancing mechanism, black start which will stack up the revenue stream and increase the investment return. With more and more European countries devoting themselves to reduce the carbon emission to “Zero” by 2050, we can envision that more and more renewables will be gradually dominant in the energy structure in the future. Undoubtedly, energy storage will continue to play an important part in solving intermittency and volatility.

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