Opinion

Q&A: GoodWe UK

REI: What have you got planned for 2016?
RS: We are very excited about next year; the Year of Energy Storage as we like to refer to 2016 within the business. GoodWe has recently announced a strategic partnership with BYD, one of the world’s largest suppliers of rechargeable batteries. This, in conjunction with our retrofit inverter unit GW2500, will transform the domestic market in the UK. In layman’s terms, it means that every single one of the 600,000 houses in the UK that has solar panels can store the energy they generate in a cost-effective way and without having to replace their existing inverters.

What is top of your wish-list from the new government?
Well, unsurprisingly, we would like them to re-think their strategy and delay the adoption of the recently announced DECC recommendations on the FiT cuts. However, everyone knows in the industry that FiT incentives have an expiry date, so the market will consolidate and evolve again with installers moving to commercial PV installations, whilst offering energy storage to their domestic customers.

How is your company cutting its carbon footprint?
At GoodWe, we are very proud of our green credentials. Our state of the art manufacturing facility and R&D centre in Suzhou, China has a roof-mounted 20kW PV system used mainly for testing purposes. We also recycle all waste and in the rare occasion where a faulty inverter is identified and returned by a customer, we recycle over 70 percent of its components, returning all the non-conforming components back to our suppliers.

Raj Sidhu is managing director of GoodWe UK