‘Trust and confidence’ central to GoodWe’s Australian expansion

At All-Energy Australia 2024, PV Tech spoke with Dean Williamson, GoodWe’s country manager for Australia and New Zealand, to learn more about the company’s new solar PV and storage product ranges and why the market is so unique.

PV Tech: Could you please introduce yourself and tell me about GoodWe’s presence in the Australian and New Zealand solar PV markets?

I am Dean Williamson, the country manager of Australia and New Zealand for GoodWe. I’ve been with the company for close to six years now. I came into the role with the aim of expanding our presence, brand reputation, and credibility in Australia and increasing our market share. After six or 12 months, we were also given the New Zealand market to develop.

When I joined, the Australian market was close to 3GW, and then you add utility-scale solar PV on top of that. Our focus areas are residential, commercial, and energy storage. We’ve now expanded into the commercial energy storage market.

The New Zealand market is very different from Australia. It’s smaller than Melbourne in terms of solar penetration, and its operations are very different. There are no real incentives to take up solar, so the return on investment there is a little bit different. The people who are taking up solar now in New Zealand are similar to the early adopters in Australia, where they’re spending a lot of money. The return on investment is starting to improve there, and we’re starting to see the market expand.

We’ve built our business on partnering with distributors. We rely on them heavily to distribute our product to the 7,000 installers we have in Australia. Our strategy is to align closely with those distributors and work with retailers to give them the right service and support to make our product more attractive.

Where does GoodWe fit in the Australian and New Zealand markets?

We really position ourselves as a premium Chinese brand. Five years ago, the market was really made up of European and Chinese players, and the perception in the market was that the European manufacturers had the premium brand, and the Chinese manufacturers were the more affordable option.

We’ve seen that really change in the last two to three years. Some Chinese players have elevated themselves, and there has also been an understanding in the market that Chinese players add new features at a faster pace, so the value proposition has become a lot better.

We position ourselves as having the largest portfolio in the Australian market, which is probably our greatest strength. We have the largest single-phase portfolio, the largest three-phase portfolio and the largest energy storage offering.

When speaking to our distributors, we say we can provide you with everything you need. In terms of price positioning, we’re probably mid-level. GoodWe are certainly not the most expensive in the market; we like to stay in the more affordable space.

There are many brands that are cheaper than us, but we strongly believe we’ve got the best value proposition of any inverter in the market.

Can you talk to me about some of your new and upcoming products?

One of the main reasons we are so excited about this year’s All-Energy Australia 2024 conference is that we are launching five or six new products. We’ve been able to speak to all our customers and show them what we’ve got.

Starting with our large commercial storage, we now have a couple of all-in-one solutions. One is a 30kW inverter with 60kWh of battery energy storage. It can be used indoors or outdoors—it’s really flexible and scalable. We’re also about to launch a similar product with a 50kW inverter and 100kWh battery. It’s just a little bit bigger, and you can scale it up to 1,200kWh.

We are releasing a 5-30kW range of three-phase inverters, which will supersede our current SDT G2 series and become our G3 series. It has three MPPT trackers, meaning you can put the panels on three different roof orientations.

In Australia, one in three houses already has solar. Many of those north-facing or east-west-facing roofs have been taken up, and now houses with different roof orientations are looking to maximise the number of panels they can put on their roof. That’s why we include more trackers so that they can use all of those different roof orientations to maximise the size of their system.

We also have a generation two electric vehicle (EV) charger coming out. This one will have dynamic load control and a longer and detachable cable for flexibility. We’re seeing that side of the market grow as well, but there is a lot of competition. It also has our three-phase hybrids; we’ve added more MPPT trackers and a higher current limit.

We also have a really large oversizing ability, around 200% oversizing, on all the hybrids. If someone has a 10kW hybrid inverter in the Australian market, they can install a 20kW solar PV system.

Another product we have is a large single-phase hybrid, and we firmly believe this is probably where our most significant growth will be in the next six months. It allows us to offer energy storage above 5kW single-phase.

What one key message do you want our audience to take away from this interview?

The key message from our point of view is that we’re here to stay in the Australian market and have invested a lot in it. When I started five or six years ago, we had four people, and now we’ve got a team of over 25.

From an HQ point of view, GoodWe places a strong emphasis on research and development, with close to 20% of our workforce in the department. Although we have the largest portfolio, we are always looking for patterns and trends where we can innovate to capture a specific market. We think we’re probably faster than most in development, so we can always capture that opportunity when it comes along.

But what we really want your audience to take out of this interview is confidence and trust in our brand and the service and support that they’ll get from us.But what we really want your audience to take out of this interview is confidence and trust in our brand and the service and support that they’ll get from us.