A worldwide brand with a formidable reputation, Diehl Controls has over 2,600 employees in the German headquarters of Wangen and Nuremberg and subsidiaries further afield (including China and the US). Outstanding engineering competence and a worldwide production volume of more than 80,000 electronic systems a day go towards building a company that is a manufacturing powerhouse.
We spoke to Armin Steck, Head of Marketing and Product Management – Photovoltaics.
PES: Welcome to the magazine. Would you first like to introduce your company and explain how you serve the PV market?
Armin Steck: PLATINUM GmbH develops and markets photovoltaic inverters that are manufactured to the highest quality standards by our partner Diehl Controls.
PES: How much of your company’s entire business is PV focussed? Is the sector a priority for you?
AS: We manufacture and market photovoltaic inverters in output classes from 2-22 kW. In addition, we offer intelligent devices for monitoring photovoltaic systems and convenient, user-friendly energy management solutions.
PES: The inverter marketplace is particularly fierce. Can you explain a little about what sets you apart from your competitors?
AS: Our inverters combine the highest quality standards with above-average efficiency and flexibility. We supply the datalogger and communication interfaces as standard, so our customers receive top products at reasonable prices.
PES: We note that you offer monitoring solutions for a range of different sized applications. How important is this to your customers and what sort of criteria are they looking to meet?
AS: Our portfolio begins with the WebMaster Home, which is primarily intended for residential/domestic PV systems. It combines functions from the areas of SmartHome and energy management for the optimisation of self-consumption.
For larger systems, we offer our WebMaster Pro. This device monitors the PV system to ensure reliable operation, thereby maximising the system’s yield. A WebMaster Pro system can safely and reliably monitor plants with up to 1000 inverters, and it also enables the connection of feed-in management and sensors via the PLATINUM IOBox. For many of our customers, it is very important that they can source these products from a single supplier as this ensures that the overall system works correctly.
PES: You have a presence the consumer market – what has uptake been like recently? Are there signs of growth?
AS: We are seeing increasing demand from the residential segment as more and more people are becoming interested in the idea of generating PV energy to meet their own energy demands.
