Siemens Announces 800 MW Inverter Manufacturing Capacity In US

German Power major Siemens has joined the rush of firms seeking to benefit from the $360 billion plus subsidies on offer under the Inflation Reduction Act in the US. Announcing plans to begin manufacturing solar string inverters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Siemens will make Blueplanet inverters at the new site, which it acquired from KACO in 2019. The inverters will be made almost exclusively for the US market, effectively.

The Kenosha facility is owned and operated by the company’s manufacturing partner Sanmina, and will help customers take advantage of the full value of solar tax credits and domestic content incentives. Production is expected to start as early as 2024 to take advantage of the subsidies under the Act, and will scale up to a capacity of 5,200 BPTL3 string inverters (800 MW) per year.

The string inverters, will range in output from 125 to 155 kW, with a California Energy Commission (CEC) certified efficiency of 99%. The inverters are designed for 1,000- or 1,500-V_DC solar array input and can be utilized for either decentralized or ‘virtual central’ design architectures.

The Kenosha facility follows an investment of over $3 billion in the US market, the largest worldwide market for Siemens. Besides power equipment, group firm Siemens Gamesa is also a key player in the wind energy market in the US, which has been growing at a fast clip.

Siemens joins a series of firms, both local and international, that are establishing manufacturing in the US, making the country a hotspot for manufacturing after decades in the renewable energy sector. The long term worry of course is that the relative high costs of the US market will eventually create distortions in the sector, as Europe is also pushing hard to create its own manufacturing base . That places China, the overwhelming global leader in the renewable energy space with especially high market shares ranging in solar manufacturing, in a tricky spot, as tariff and non-tariff barriers come up to protect these new firms in a key consumption market like the US or Europe, for that matter.