Hyundai jumps back into booming Australian solar market

Hyundai Heavy Industries has announced it is re-entering the Australian solar market, in a $70 million vote of confidence in the nation’s ongoing residential and commercial rooftop solar boom.
Hyundai HI, which stopped selling its PV panels in the Australian market in 2011, said on Monday it was now pursuing an “aggressive growth strategy” via an exclusive distribution deal with Queensland-based outfit Supply Partners.
The re-launch will focus on Australia’s rooftop solar markets, and will include a 300-watt monocrystalline panel for residential, and 360-watt panel for commercial projects, the company said.
And the company has set some aggressive new volume targets, with plans to sell between 20-30MW of panels in 2018, and 40-50MW in 2019 – compared to a total of around 10MW when it exited the Australia market in 2011.
Hyundai HI Green Energy head of global sales, Larry Kim, says that amount would most likely include several large-scale projects, which would also be sourced through Supply Partners.
But Kim stressed that the company’s focus was very much on the residential and commercial markets – based on what he described as “very stable demand.”
“Nowadays, the Australian market is growing very fast in all markets, but residential and commercial are more stable,” Kim told RE in an interview.
“This is part of (our) long-term strategy,” he said.
And while Hyundai HI deals in energy storage as well, Kim said that the focus in Australia would be on supplying solar panels, for now.
“We are focusing on the Korean market for energy storage systems first,” he said. “After that, (we will look at) the Australia residential market.
“But not in the near future.”