U.S. solar manufacturer Enphase Energy, Inc. has announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2019 – and the market appears very pleased.
Enphase Energy is the world’s largest manufacturer of microinverters, which are miniature inverters operating at a per-panel level instead of the more common arrangement of a single string inverter used with multiple solar panels.
Enphase states its fourth quarter revenue was USD $210.0 million, an increase of 17% sequentially and 128% year-over year. Looking ahead, it expects revenue to be within a range of $200 million to $210 million for the first quarter of this year.
As for the market’s reaction to the report, they say a picture is worth a thousand words – it’s a lot quicker than writing, and avoids the need for me to go into other financial gobbledygook I don’t really understand. As at around twenty minutes before market close today:
Microinverter Shipments
Enphase shipped approximately 677 megawatts DC of its microinverters, or 2,112,725 units, during Q4 2019. To date, more than 25 million Enphase microinverters have been shipped globally.
According to Australian solar installer MC Electrical, which had installed 1,550 Enphase microinverters on 77 homes over a period of 5 years, only four had failed (0.25%) up to October last year. It’s not such a great thing if you happen to be the owner of one of those failed units though, but at least there’s a decent warranty (10 years).
Enphase Encharge On Track
Aside from microinverters, Enphase’s other focus is energy storage. The AC Battery has been around for a few years and the next solar battery product to be released is Enphase Encharge.
The company describes the Enphase Encharge 10 product as an all-in-one AC-coupled storage system comprised of three base Encharge 3 storage units with a total usable energy capacity of 10.08kWh, and twelve embedded grid-forming microinverters with 3.84kW power rating.
“Shipments of our Encharge™1 battery storage system utilizing our Ensemble™ energy management technology remain on track for March 2020 ,” states the report. “We are pleased with the pre-orders received and are ramping installer training to support the product launch.”
The report doesn’t provide any numbers on Encharge pre-order levels. Australia was one of the first (or the first, I can’t remember which) countries where the AC Battery was rolled out and it appears it will be second in line after the USA for Encharge.
Just for the sake of transparency, I think SolarQuotes founder Finn still holds Enphase shares (lucky fellow if he does) – but he didn’t ask/tell me to write this (or even drop a hint).