SMA Solar Technology, the German inverter manufacturer, is targeting the worldwide digital energy market through the launch of a new subsidiary.
Dubbed Coneva, the Munich-based office will offer white label energy management, monitoring and control solutions for applications in utilities, housing associations, telecommunications and commercial enterprises.
SMA said Coneva would develop and provide solutions which would help traditional business models in a changing energy environment where they are becoming “increasingly obsolete”.
It added that traditional utilities would be capable of retaining their foothold in the market by offering dedicated solutions suited to the “new energy world”.
Pierre-Pascal Urbon, chief executive at SMA, said that the company was using that energy transition to power its own evolution into an energy service provider, something that was now one of its key strategic goals.
“The founding of Coneva GmbH is an important milestone along this road. This will allow us to tap into new markets and customer groups with an energy service platform,” he said.
SMA said the heart of Coneva’s business model would centre on “holistic energy management”, taking into account on-site generation, storage, emobility and energy consumption from areas including lighting, heating and ventilation.
Jochen Schneider has been named as general manager for the subsidiary. He said that digitalisation of the energy market offered “completely new opportunities and possibilities”.
“Numerous start-ups are entering the energy services market in particular and many of them have little experience either on the market or with this technology. For us, it is thus a huge advantage that we can build on SMA’s many years of expertise, sophisticated technology and data, while also being able to act as a dynamic, standalone unit completely independent of the parent company,” Schneider added.
