Sungrow Struts With Eye-Popping Inverter Shipments

Chinese inverter and battery storage giant Sungrow says it achieved “unprecedented” revenues and profits last year.

Sungrow’s operating revenue saw a year-on-year increase of 79.5% in 2023, reaching USD $10.2 billion. Net profit attributable to shareholders jumped by 162.7% to USD $1.3 billion.

“This robust growth was primarily attributed to the company’s expanding customer base and increasing market share in key regions,” states the firm.

Inverter shipments reached more than 130GW last year, bringing the company’s overall tally to 515 GW as at December 2023. On the energy storage front, Sungrow reported 10.5GWh of batteries shipped in 2023.

Apparently taking the maxim of “innovate or die” to heart, the company has been throwing buckets of cash at research and development. This year it has allocated USD $347 million towards R&D activity, 44.6% growth. Sungrow currently boasts 5,372 R&D technical personnel, and claims to have been granted a cumulative total of 4123 patents.

As well as inverters for the home, commercial and utility sectors, and energy storage, the company is dabbling in green hydrogen and manufacturing EV chargers.

Sungrow is also making headway on a goal of reaching 100% renewable energy for its electricity requirements by 2028, which was announced in 2020. With the proportion of green electricity used throughout last year rising to 55%, the firm appears to be on track.

Australians Take A Shine To Sungrow

Sungrow’s arrival in Australia back in 2012 was at a time when Austria’s Fronius and Germany’s SMA pretty much ruled the roost when it came to quality home solar inverters. Sungrow offered significantly cheaper alternatives that were still of good quality and while not without their issues from time to time, the company’s inverters found a solid foothold in Australia quite rapidly.

Here on SolarQuotes, we have close to 3,200 ratings and reviews of Sungrow inverters that have averaged a 4.7 star rating overall and 4.8 stars over the last 12 months. The company is currently listed as an SQ-recommended inverter brand.

Australian installers have warmed to Sungrow too, with the company taking out gold for the fourth year running in the best inverters of 2024 budget category in the SolarQuotes Installers Choice Awards. It also achieved bronze in the “money no object” category and silver in the support category.

On the home battery side of things, Sungrow  has made substantial inroads since adding energy storage to its repertoire. While its original effort – the PowCube – didn’t see huge uptake here, the company appears to be on a winner with the newer modular SBR HV system; pricing and specifications of which can be found on our battery comparison table.

SQ founder Finn installed a Sungrow SBR HV battery at his rental property last year, along with a Sungrow SH5.0RS hybrid inverter and smart meter. He’s been generally pleased with the hardware and the battery’s performance, but although the app does everything needed, Finn’s opinion is it has a lousy interface and is hard to navigate.

Sungrow solar batteries have achieved an average 4.8 star rating overall in SQ customer reviews, and scored a gong in each category of this year’s Installer Choice Awards for best home battery brands in 2024.