Fronius has developed into a solar innovation manager from modest origins in a small Austrian workshop that repaired radios in 1945. In 2025 the company has celebrated 80 years since it was founded.
In June 1945, Günter Fronius – an electrical engineer – started a service that repaired radio devices and electrical appliances. An inventive type, it didn’t take long for it to develop a charger for the car battery that was still unusual at that time. Mr. Fronius became a very busy man, but expanded his business and branched up 5 years after the start of the operations in the sweat transformers. Welding technologies are still a central focus of Fronius today.
Fronius occurs in Solar
The company continued to grow and started its solar department in 1992. The Fronius Sunrise Midi Grid Connect inverter was released a few years later, which was a 1.5 kW unit at around 25 kg. Next, the start of the IG inverter area in 2001 was the next and initially a misstep. Early models had problems such as communication errors, network problems, overheating and internal errors.
Fronius learned from the early IG inverter situation and continued to press. When the company started the Snapinverter series, which contained an innovative simple assembly system in 2014, the awards soon followed. This range served the company and its customers very well, but Snapinverter were eliminated last year.
Snapinverters were replaced by the SyMo and Primo -Gen24 series of interverters. Under the new functions and improvements, the Gen24 series deals with a common criticism about its predecessor – fan noise. Snapinverter gets quite loud when the inverter works hard, e.g. B. on very hot days. Most inverters do not have a fan and a heat sink (active cooling), but rely on the convection (passive cooling) with only one heat sink. However, the fan helps to have the device working with optimal efficiency, and a cooler solar inverter can mean a longer lifespan. While the Gen24 inverters have a big fan, they are much quieter.
Fronius Solar inverter Evolution – The Midi Sunrise, IG Plus, Primo Snapinverter and Gen24
Fronius Inverter Reviews here for solar quotas from Australian customers have achieved an average of 4.8 stars of 8,819 reviews at the time of writing and 4.9 stars in the past 12 months (761 reviews) and 4.9 stars. At the Solarquotes Installers’ Choice Awards for the best solar inverters in 2025, Fronius took the 5th year in the course of the top.
Beyond solar change judges
Apart from solar change judges, Fronius in 2015 brought its first entry into solar energy storage with the Fronius solar battery. While he had set himself up in 2023, the company started the Fronius Reserva Home Battery in early March 2025, which will eventually be available in Australia.
Fronius also produces the ohm pilot. The Ohmpilot published in 2017 is a PV ID that uses excess solar energy to heat water and supply other resistance loads. In addition, the company’s Wattpilot EV Charger was brought onto the market very well (but more expensive) in May 2021. The watt pilot recorded gold for the best EV chargers in 2025 at the SQ -Awarders Choice Awards.
Still a family -run business
Günter Fronius presented the company to Brigitte Strauß and Klaus Fronius in 1980. The company’s founder Elisabeth Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß took over the administration of the company from her mother and her uncle in 2012 in 2012 and is now the CEO of Fronius of Fronius. Ms. Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß thinks about the legacy of her grandfather:
“If they look at the conditions at this time, our beginnings were characterized by innovation, daring and solidarity. The scarce resources aroused the inventive spirit of my grandfather and encouraged him to use the best possible use of it to make it repairable and make it affordable for a broad section of the population.”
Comment the challenges that the company has recently faced with the competition and various upheavals around the world that led to the company’s layoffs:
“We are passionate about renewable energies and consistently adhere to our vision of 24 hours of sun. The sun market was and is characterized by ups and downs, and the effects of the latest crisis are still clearly noticeable,” said Ms. Engelbrechbrechtsmürauß. “But our 80-year history has taught us that we do not give up even in challenging times, but in the opposite-stronger.”
Footnot
- SQS Anthony generally describes Fronius Gear pricing as “soothingly expensive”. ↩
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