Despite appearing at the All Energy conference with a perfectly fancy and expensive booth, it appears that SMA Australia has quietly withdrawn from the Australian market.
Surely SMA didn’t go bankrupt? No, they will remain present in the large-scale commercial solar farm sector.
Why is SMA leaving Australia?
It’s been a few weeks since I saw a grainy photo of a PC screen that sent a wave of disbelief through the solar circles, but the PDF copy I’ve received since is clear enough. SMA, once the undisputed Australian market leader in solar inverters, has completely dissolved its sales department.
That’s the only confirmation we have at the moment.
Has stood the test of time
A fundamental part of the solar mass market and an integral part of the furniture industry, SMA is missed by people who value quality and durability.
Probably the oldest SMA I’ve come across – a BP Solar branded GCI200 coupled to Australian made 75 watt frameless BP solar panels.
Fortunately, SMA has the honor to honor its guarantees – apparently they maintain a local office, so anyone who owns a SunnyBoy/Sunny Island/Sunny Storage can continue to enjoy a bright future. However, I don’t know how “intelligently connected” services will work in the future.
It’s a stark contrast to Hanwha effectively abandoning Australia when they brought Qcells under control. Not to outshine Zeco, it’s a bit cheap for Hanwha to hand over national obligations to a company that operates in two states.
I loved SMA
As a sole proprietor, I never advertised. Either I ended up snooping on people or my phone just rang because someone recommended me. For years I simply installed SMA Sunny Boy TL5000 inverters with 20+ modules on the roof, and they were rock solid.
Reliability personified.
The only time I faltered was when a customer talked me into a cheap piece of junk, which taught me a big lesson. You should never compromise on your standards because replacing a Growatt five times is not worth it.
However, none of my customers have ever called to complain about the big red box on the wall, but unfortunately the sands of time have caught up with some of the Simax panels I had installed with SMA inverters. The Suntrix people said Simax was excellent quality, but in hindsight I should have sold REC panels.
If your panels turn out to be junk and the water seeps into the edges, you’ll end up with ground faults that will affect performance until they potentially dry out. The problem only gets worse and your SMA inverter protests with a red light and an insulation fault on the screen.
“Insulation resistance” and the dreaded red light brought production to a halt after 91.926 MWh and 11 years and 4 days – about 22.85 kWh/day. The only bug to report was an occasional screen failure, simply due to age.
There’s only one way to go when you’re number 1
As SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock recently told SMA, “They did it to themselves.” It’s a shame actually, but when you’re the market leader there’s always the risk of going out of control.
As I recall, there were a few factors that may have caused SMA to reverse. Australia escaped a global economic crisis in 2008, but the German company could not sustain production sufficiently to satisfy the emerging market here. My own house ended up getting an Australian made Latronics PVE2500 because we couldn’t buy anything else.
The incredibly heavy and robust SunnyBoy 1100, 1700 and 2500 or SMC series were the industry standard for many years, but when SMA moved to the transformerless topology, the TL 3000, 4000 and 5000 became popular everywhere. Then came the HF devices for a short time.
The SMA HF3000 solar inverter.
The really crucial moment, however, was when the German-made Sunny Boy TL was replaced by the AV 40 around 2016. Suddenly we had “premium” products that were dead on arrival. The installers were already upset that the screen had disappeared, but a ridiculous quality control error that resulted in brand new but broken inverters destroyed SMA’s reputation.
I’ve never seen an AV40 catch fire, but they certainly destroyed SMA’s reputation.
Everyone said screw you and your move to Chinese manufacturing. Especially if there was a separate budget brand with SMA support. ZeverSolar had a short life and I’m grateful I only got my hands dirty on one of them.
SMA Sunny Island 48V battery inverters were popping up everywhere, including this off-grid system from Redfow with a ton of lead acid batteries in the backend.
The nice Germans were waiting
When Fronius brought the Snapinverter series onto the market, the rest was history. While SMA replaced the tried-and-tested and informative LCD screen with three LEDs and a new monitoring app, they discovered that people just don’t like change.
Fronius had an equally good reputation in Austria and had a better screen. With the right code, installers probably had a hundred menus accessible via four buttons. The Solarweb online monitoring via WLAN and without the annoying Bluetooth interface was a real winner.
More recently
Apparently SMA has just lost interest in Australia. Even when the new hybrid battery systems were released in October 2023, the electric vehicle charger was not part of the Australian product range, although we have at least a 5-star rating for the installation.
As recently as March 2025 they were talking about a recovery after some pretty ordinary results, but it seems Australia is simply not part of the plan.
Please leave us a few comments, or better yet, write a review if you have something good to say about SMA. You never know, maybe they’ll come back one day.
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