Eleonora Denna, Product Marketing Manager for Environmental Solution Business EMEA, Omron, explains to PES about their commitment to the PV business. Omron are in many markets world-wide with their inverters. The company moves with the times, adjusting to new demands. The Omron inverter was chosen for the Antalya Football Arena. It is an exciting time for them…
PES: Welcome to PES Solar/PV magazine. Thanks for talking with us. Would you like to begin by explaining a little about the background of your organisation and how you currently serve the solar/PV industry?
Eleonora Denna: Thanks for this question, which gives me the opportunity to give you a picture of Omron, a worldwide market leader for automation components, with revenues of 6.1 billion euros and offices all over the world The company is strongly committed to research and innovation, investing 6% of the revenue every year in R&D. Omron has been producing and selling photovoltaic inverters since 1994 and over the twenty years has sold more than one million.
We are a market leader in the solar business in Japan, where the residential sector is continuing a positive development. Omron Environmental Solution Business in Europe, with headquarters in the Netherlands, is in charge of Omron PV business in the EMEA Market (Europe, Middle East and Africa), with the main focus in Italy, Spain and emerging solar markets, such as Benelux, Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, Lebanon and South Africa.
PES: Is solar/PV a growing business area for Omron? How are you capitalising on this growth?
ED: Omron is strongly committed to the PV business, which has different priorities from country to country: Italy and Spain, for example, are mature markets where O&M opportunities are quite strong and new solar installations have tailed off. In these countries “revamping” is a strategic issue and Omron, as one of the inverter producers who are still on the market, assists those plants where the other inverter manufacturers failed.
In other countries the solar business is growing, with new, big plants. An example of this is Turkey, where the total annual insolation time is 2.737 hours, (a total of 7.5 hours per day) and the grid is capable of supporting solar PV growth with no problem. The Omron inverter was chosen for Antalya Football Arena, one of the highest capacity solar systems on a Stadium, aiming to make the Guinness Records.
