The transcription of the video is below.

Anton’s Solar Industry Journey

Kerim: Hi, everyone. This is Kerim, Kerim Baran with SolarAcademy. I am today here with Anton Patton, from CPS. Anton is the VP of Product at CPS, and today we’re going to talk a lot about how CPS approaches innovation in the field of inverters, and mostly C&I inverters, but also beyond.

With that, welcome Anton, good to have you here. Let me open the conversation with asking you about your background. How did you end up in the solar industry? How did you end up at CPS? 

Tell us a little bit as far back as you like. I believe I remember that you’re from the Bay Area, and you went to school in the Bay Area. Just tell us a little bit about how you ended up where you are now.

Anton: I grew up in the Bay Area, but went to college, UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley for mechanical engineering. I always was wanting to get into engineering, but also always had a desire to get into something related to sustainability and the environment.

During grad school, I did research in the lab of manufacturing and sustainability. That’s my educational background. Then once I graduated, started looking at different roles of how you could apply engineering in the sustainability field and renewable energy and solar fit right in there, what I was looking for. 

I have been in the solar industry since 2013, maybe a little before that, but been working in different technical roles for mostly commercial and industrial solar PV projects. 

I started in solar on the EPC side and project development side as a design engineer, working on designing systems, commercial PV systems, being out in the field, working on the installation as well as going out and helping commission and troubleshoot systems. 

I was able to get a lot of good experience looking at the overall designs, as well as being out in the field and working on installations. I worked at a couple of different EPCs and developers in the commercial space. 

In 2018, I started at CPS. 

CPS America’s Market Expansion Strategy

One thing I was really excited about CPS was being able to take all of that experience I had gotten designing systems, working with equipment in the field, seeing how they operate, what issues you could run into in the field, and then taking that to the product side of working with a team to advance the technology, develop new products to help address pain points in the industry and figure out what new solutions we could come up with to help make projects successful.

Anton: At CPS, I did start as a business development engineer, working closely with our sales team, providing that technical support on the engineering side, moved into more of an applications engineer role. And then the past few years have been working with our leadership team on the product management side. 

A big part of my role is working with our engineering team, our apps engineers, but also our customers and gathering feedback of what works well, what the challenges are, and what the best fit is for projects, and working with our R&D and engineering team on what solutions can we provide and what’s the best fit for making our customer projects successful.

Kerim: Thanks for that background. That is comprehensive. Let’s talk a little bit about CPS too, because CPS is a huge global company with a wide footprint that spans every continent probably, maybe except Antarctica. I don’t know. You tell me. But you guys are really big in America too.

I remember from the early 2010s when CPS made its entry into the U.S. solar market with its inverters for mostly the C&I space. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the company, how its most popular products are positioned in the US, and then we can dive into the innovative ways you guys go to market, create products, and all that.

Anton: At CPS America, we are and have been focused on the US market. We are now expanding into the Canada and Latin America markets, as well, but since about 2010, CPS America has been focused on the United States and providing equipment, solar PV inverters for the U.S. market specifically. Now, the parent company, the Chint Group, is a global company, a multi-billion dollar company that works with projects globally.

Whereas CPS America, we are really focused on the U.S. market, and now Canada and Latin America, as well.

Kerim: Are the main products being inverters? Are there other product lines beyond that in America or in other markets? And then also like talking a little bit about the kinds of inverters, I remember you guys used to be, if I remember correctly, you were more like utility-focused, but you went down market as well, or is there some positioning like that? 

Anton: I think it was the other way around. We have mostly been in the C&I market. That’s been our main focus, is the commercial and industrial solar PV market. Our main product has been our three-phase string inverters so that product line for commercial projects. 

For the commercial and industrial market segment, CPS has been the market leader, I think for the past seven out of the eight years, the past seven or eight years for the U.S. market.

Kerim: Okay, wow. Okay.

Anton: So three-phase string inverters in the US, we’ve been a market leader there for the past seven or eight years. That’s been our main product line. Now, we have expanded for the past three or four years into the larger utility-scale market, but focusing on string inverter technology bringing string inverters to utility-scale projects. 

We launched a few years ago our 275-kilowatt inverter, and we’re now offering our 350-kilowatt inverter, which is one of the largest power ratings for string inverters out there in the world.

String inverter technology has been our main focus, and we’ve been, again, a market leader in commercial PV, three-phase string.

But we’re now branching into utility-scale, as well as energy storage of bringing string inverter technology to energy storage projects as well. We have our new commercial energy storage systems, 125 kilowatt-hour,  261 kilowatt-hour energy storage system, really designed for the C&I market and those types of applications.

CPS Product Innovation and Customer Feedback

Kerim: Great. Thanks for that background. 

Let’s move into a little bit of the product innovations that you touch at CPS that make your combination of your products and services unique in the market.

Anton: Yeah. Yeah, I guess, do you want to get into the innovations themselves or the process?

Kerim: I think maybe start with the process. Let’s start with the process, and then talk about some examples of how that process ended up creating some new products. That’d be great.

Anton: I mean, one area, in my role at CPS that’s really fun, is being able to take the market feedback, the voice of the customer of what the needs are, what types of projects and challenges there are.

The solar industry evolves very quickly. You look at the past 10, 20 years alone, the technology has advanced. The industry itself, there’s been many different parts of the industry that have evolved.

It is something that we have to constantly keep up with. I mean, that really drives most of our innovation is really getting, working closely with our customers, the designers, the engineers, the developers, and seeing what types of projects they’re working on and what types of projects are upcoming and then what the needs are or what they’re looking for in equipment.

Taking that and figuring out with our R&D team, what can we come up with? What’s the best solution we can develop to make these projects be successful? Some of our main goals are how do we make it easy to install? Simple on the design side, interconnection side, and then operations as well, and maintenance. 

Those are a few things that we look at on the innovation side of, really how do we come up with these solutions that are going to help make our customer projects successful? That could be anything from the way they’re designing it, the way they’re submitting their permitting and interconnection with the AHJs and the way it’s operating, how much it’s going to produce, but also, the cost of the equipment as well. That all kind of goes into the product development and design.

Our engineering team has to look at all of the different market needs, whether it’s interconnection requirements, different safety standards, UL 1741, IEEE 1547. A lot of these things are constantly changing and evolving. We’re in a lot of the different industry groups of seeing what sort of requirements and changes are coming.

Kerim: In one of my previous conversations with, I think, John Drummond from CPS, I remember a comment like CPS being like the GE of Asia. 

Large corporations like that, I’m assuming, they must have a great internal process for listening to the customer and innovating around that. I’m just assuming here, but you must have been exposed to some of those processes and learned a lot in terms of how to get that direct feedback from the customer and then innovate solutions that add value. Lucky you, I guess. 

Anton: It’s definitely one part of my role and being at CPS that I like a lot. I feel like we’re able to make a big impact with how we innovate.

We work with a lot of different EPCs, developers, different types of projects. We’ve shipped over 10 gigawatts of three-phase string inverters to the US alone. Really being able to see some of the products that we’ve developed and are now offering and seeing all of the different ways that we’ve taken that feedback from customers and projects and being able to improve or develop new features and products is really exciting.

I think a lot of the customers that we’ve worked with closely over the years have seen that and appreciate being able to have some input and then see it realized in a product that’s developed.

Kerim: Maybe we can talk a little bit about some examples of these innovations that come out of this process. I remember you mentioning even something as simple as a wire box design or the various different troubleshooting approaches. 

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the story behind these innovations and then what they are and how they came about, what they do and how they add value to the customer.

Inverter Innovations and Serviceability Features

Anton: There are a few key innovations that are unique to CPS that I can highlight. One innovative feature of a lot of our inverters is what we call our separable wire box design.

A lot of our commercial solar PV inverters have a separable wire box where you think of the inverter having two different compartments. One we call the power head, where all the power electronics are. That’s all the power conversion controls. That’s all being done in the power head. 

And the wire box is where all the cables are terminated. All your DC coming from the solar array, your AC that’s then connected to the building or the sites balance the system, communication wiring.

The main advantage of a separable wire box design is if you’re doing troubleshooting, maintenance, or have to replace an inverter, that power head, you’re really talking about two bolts on each side of the power head where you’re unscrewing those. You’re sliding the power head off, putting a new one on without touching any of the electrical conductors, wires or lugs.

One advantage is you’re turning a multiple-hour job into something like 15 minutes because you’re really just sliding the power right off, putting another one on. And you’re not having to touch any of the electrical wiring. You don’t need a licensed electrician to do that type of work if that’s all they’re doing.

That’s one key innovation, and that’s brought a lot of value to customers out in the field. I mean, I’ve done troubleshooting and maintenance out in the field and a lot of our team has. We have seen that firsthand, even outside of being at CPS. That’s been one key innovation that’s been really valuable for our customers.

Let’s see, a few others, we have something that we call KVA overhead. So it’s the apparent power rating of the inverter, basically. We allow it to be programmed to be higher than the default rating. The advantage there is we’ve seen a lot of projects that the utility and the grid that the inverters are being connected to require some sort of grid stability support. They may need to operate at a non-unity power factor to provide VAR support for the grid, voltage stability, basically, grid stability.

With this KVA overhead feature, the systems are able to provide that VAR support, that grid support, without taking a hit or having lower active power production. Being able to produce at the maximum rating of the system while also providing grid support. That’s obviously been, when it’s needed, definitely a valuable feature as well.

Kerim: Right. 

Anton: Some other innovations, a key area that we focused on is serviceability of our products. The main reason for that is having solutions to minimize the amount of downtime of these systems.

If there is an issue, being able to have a solution that can get these systems back up and running, as soon as possible. One advantage of string inverters is that we’re able to have replacement units in stock. If an inverter needs to be replaced, we typically ship those within 24 hours, a replacement for an RMA, a lot of times, while we’re still troubleshooting and figuring out what the issue is. 

But we’ve also done a lot on the remote troubleshooting and diagnosis capabilities of the inverters. If, say, there’s an alarm or a fault that’s seen, our team’s able to go in and see, all right, what was going on with the voltage or current or temperature even, and be able to diagnose issues quickly versus having to go roll a truck out to the site and see what’s going on. Then maybe have to go back and have a replacement inverter or a part. It cuts that potential downtime even more.

Kerim: How is that done, the remote troubleshooting? Are video technologies involved or is it all electronic, mostly electronic signals that you’re receiving?

Anton: The inverters themselves are able to read and monitor many different data points and parameters, so things like voltage and current, both on the DC side, for each MPPT. On the AC side, seeing the grid voltage and looking at the power, the temperature of different parts of the product. The inverters themselves, part of their controls and communication is being able to have those readings.

And we offer what we call our CPS FlexOM gateway that can be installed at a site that basically pulls that data from the inverters. We’re able to see that on the remote portal. We’re able to look at alarms, chart the different data to help diagnose and troubleshoot what is going on at a site.

It also allows being able to adjust settings as needed, remotely upgrade firmware. It really helps speed up diagnosis and troubleshooting. 

Kerim: I remember talking about integrated disconnects and rapid shutdown. Can you talk a little bit about that as well? 

Anton: With our commercial PV inverters, as well as all of our products, we try and have as much of the needed equipment integrated into the inverter so that installers are not needing to install the inverter, plus, other equipment, connect different products together, a science experiment, having it all-in-one product integrated. It goes through all the certification and testing. Everything’s there and proven. 

The disconnects you mentioned, most of our inverters have integrated DC and AC switches on them. Providing the disconnecting means they’re at the inverter level versus having to install it externally. That provides a lot of design flexibility for designers or installers of our inverters, of being able to place the inverters or have the specific layout needed for the site, which some commercial projects can be challenging, whether it’s trying to fit equipment up on a rooftop or a carport or some sort of field with different terrain. That’s one big advantage of string inverter technology is that design flexibility.

But rapid shutdown too. We have our inverters PV rapid shutdown system certified with AP Smart module level devices and part of the system is having a transmitter that sends a signal to the module devices. When rapid shutdown is initiated on site, the transmitter stops sending that signal. One thing we’ve done is we’ve integrated that transmitter into the inverter wire box.

It’s connected to the AC terminals in the inverter. Once the inverter sees that AC power has been disconnected, when a disconnect switch or whatever the rapid shutdown initiation device is, that not only has the inverter disconnected and de-energized, but also has the transmitter de-energized at the exact same time. So being able to have all of that rapid shutdown solution without having to install different boxes and electrical enclosures.

PID Mitigation in New Inverters

Again, the main goal is to have a simple, easy-to-install, easy-to-design solution. 

Kerim: One other topic was reactive power at night and DC- enhanced fault response. Maybe we might want to talk a little bit about that along with PID mitigation, if you want to touch on that as well. 

Anton: I’ll start with reactive power at night and PID. Some of our new products, like our 350-kilowatt inverter, 800-volt inverter, as well as our 250-kilowatt, 600-volt inverter, those both have PID mitigation integrated in them.

Kerim: What does PID stand for again? I think you told me that. 

Anton: PID stands for potential induced degradation. It’s a type of degradation that can occur with PV modules.

A lot of the modules today are either PID-resistant or able to not have the effects of PID. Now, thin film modules, I think generally, can have PID degradation occur. One thing that we’ve done is integrated that type of functionality in the inverter. If thin film modules are used or if there’s some sort of PID concern, that function can be turned on to mitigate that both, during the day while the inverters are operating, as well as at night, when the inverters are not operating. It can still have recovery from PID effects. So being able to reverse some of those PID effects that can occur, whereas during the day, while the inverters are operating and the modules are producing, being able to prevent those, to begin with.

Kerim: How does that work? Like at night, do you give some current to the panels? 

Anton: It’s more of a voltage bias that the inverter can provide on those runs with the modules and be able to either prevent or recover that PID effect with the modules. It’s more of providing a voltage bias on the inverters, but yeah, another feature is the reactive power at night.

This is similar to the KVA overhead feature. Some solar PV projects depending on where they’re interconnected or the type of grid they’re interconnecting to will sometimes need to provide grid support, even at night when the solar inverters aren’t operating when the sun’s not out. 

Solar Plus Storage Solutions

But a few of our inverters, like our 350-kilowatt, 800-volt inverter has a feature that the “Q at Night” or the reactive power at night function can be turned on to provide basically that voltage regulation and grid support that some projects will need. 

A lot of our commercial projects haven’t needed that type of grid support, of our support, but some of the bigger utility-scale systems have so it’s something that again, when it’s needed has been a valuable feature.

Kerim: Any other key product innovations we want to touch on before we talk a little bit about energy storage solutions?

Anton: I think those are the big ones. I mean, I think in general, we’re always thinking of the installers as they’re either working inside the equipment, operating it, interfacing it.

There are always different improvements that we look at and try and continuously innovate on, whether it’s having enough working space in the wire box or making it simple to commission the inverters, simple settings that’s clear and easy to do. 

Kerim: Let’s talk a little bit about energy storage. Obviously, that is the next frontier in solar’s growth. Tell me, in general, what you are seeing in the market in terms of, does every project have a storage component now in the middle of 2025? 

How are the costs of batteries coming down? How is that changing the feasibility of integrating storage into projects? But then, let’s talk about what makes CPS’s offerings unique around storage as well?

Anton: To one of your first questions, we are still seeing a lot systems out there. I would say, not every project today is needing storage, depending on what markets, what States, or even counties the projects are, but we are seeing more and more projects that are solar plus storage and adding that energy storage component especially in places like California, where I am. The utility rates have changed pretty dramatically over the past few years.

The net metering programs has made it very challenging for solar-only systems to pencil economically without having that energy storage component. I would say it definitely varies across different States and project locations, but we are seeing energy storage like you said, can be a key component in that next step in the evolution. 

Kerim: Would just say 50% of the projects have storage now in California?

Anton: I’m not sure. I know I’ve looked at, I think SEIA has some data, some kind of overall market data. And CALSSA does have some. I forget the numbers off the top of my head, but it’s definitely, if it’s not 50, it’s definitely trending that way.

But again, we are seeing some projects, depending on the site what sort of loads there are, especially in the commercial side, whether they’re using all of the energy produced by solar, then net metering becomes less of an impact. It definitely varies. 

At CPS, we have developed energy storage solutions for both commercial and utility-scale projects. On the commercial side, we have our 125-kilowatt, 261 kilowatt-hour system.

And then utility-scale, we have larger. Products are 2.4 megawatt-hour 5 megawatt-hour battery systems. You can kind of see the scale there. Those larger systems are designed for very large PV plus storage sites. 

Like I said, we at CPS have made the decision, strategic decision to focus on string inverter technology for the U.S. market.

Like you said, our global team has a lot of different products that they offer and have developed, but what we’ve done at CPS America is really focus on three-phase string inverter technology, and found how do we bring this technology and make it applicable to all these different segments in the market? One of those is energy storage. One of our latest products is our 125 kilowatt, 261 kilowatt-hour commercial system. That’s batteries that are manufactured by CPS, inverters as well, all integrated into one single container. 

Again, that goes back to how do we make this simple to design with simple to install? You’ve got the batteries, the inverters all pre-integrated connected together so you’re not having to find batteries from one manufacturer and figure out how it’ll connect to an inverter and then other equipment.

That’s one we’re really excited about, having it all integrated, certified. All you’re doing is dropping it in place at the site and connecting the AC wires to the building loads. 

Kerim: Earlier in this conversation, I did a — I’m going to share my screen for a second. I did a quick search on ChatGPT about Chint. Well, here it is. I just wanted to share this with the audience.

It was founded in 1984, 30,000 employees globally, public company. And these are, it says, the main product lines are these. So would the storage solutions coupled with solar, would that go under, I guess, this product line of microgrid solutions and energy storage? Is that how it is categorized in the US as well? I mean, obviously, there are so many other product lines here, medium and high voltage equipment, low voltage products, industrial automation, all of that, USD 16 billion in annual revenue. That is significant and the breakdown by geography. 

Anton: That’s Chint Group. CPS America, we’re much, much smaller.

Kerim: Which I’m assuming is this 5-8% is mostly you guys about that total Chint Group revenues. Who knows if this is accurate, but it’s still a pretty impressive company with 16 billion in revenues and market cap, only 7 billion. That seems like a good buy opportunity, although we’re not giving any stock advice here. That is a quick high level view on Chint, competes with the likes of Schneider, Siemens, ABB, obviously. 

I guess microgrids is that a thing that is a term that you guys use in your go-to-market, and do you see a rapid increase in the sale of those types of solutions? 

Anton: The microgrid side, yeah. We have seen more and more microgrid projects with our products. It is something our energy storage systems have the capability of grid-forming versus just grid-following. They do have the capability of being used in microgrid projects.

We’ve also seen our PV inverters being used in microgrid products, projects with other equipment. It is, I think, a growing market segment that we’re starting to see more and more projects with. 

Rising Delivery Costs and Microgrids

Kerim: One curious question that I have on that. I don’t know if you know the answer to this or you’re exposed to this, but with delivery charges now nearing 30 cents in Southern California, I don’t know if you’re aware, but I live in San Diego. My March bill had a delivery charge of 30 cents on average.

I mean, I live in a mid-rise, so maybe that doesn’t apply to every C&I setting, but still, delivery charges are quite expensive. Everybody’s talking about oh, nuclear this, fusion, fission. Oh, what if we can deliver, create electrons at 2 cents a kilowatt hour or 1 cent or 1/2 a cent? 

Well, as long as your delivery charges are 30 cents or even 20 cents, your best price is going to be 20.5 cents or 21 cents, even if you have free nuclear power. So you’re never going down below 20 cents, but with 10 cent solar panels now, okay, 10 cents a watt in China. Okay.

Maybe 20 cents, let’s call it in the US or call it 25 cents with 154% tariff. It’s still, I mean, there are also other options, non-Chinese options below 20 cents now. So 20 cents panels and batteries at around a hundred dollars per kilowatt-hour at scale, you can put together a scaled system all in for a buck a watt with unlimited storage and panels.

With the delivery charge at 20 cents, if you value the kilowatt-hour at 20 cents, you have 30 cents on a dollar return like first year. That’s a 30% yield in year one. That’s like a three-year payback.

If you form your own off-grid microgrid in any campus setting, it could even be for my mid-rise building, if there was enough parking space here to build. 

Are people thinking about that? And are you seeing an uptick in these kinds of solutions, demand for these kinds of solutions? 

Anton: I mean, definitely California because of the rate structures utilize the solar production, with energy storage, during peak hours, even, and being able to reduce the bills in a way that I think in California, at least solar-only can’t do. We work with, on the energy management system side, we have a partner, Elexity, that helps do a lot of that economic analysis of looking at the site bills of all of their energy and demand charges, looking at the rates they’re on. 

Kerim: Like Energy Toolbase, like functionality. 

Anton: Right, and being able to calculate all that. They have seen payback periods within three or so years. That is something that’s being looked at more and more. And I think any developer or EPC looking at solar is either also looking at storage or thinking about storage.

I mean, that’s really what we’re hearing. I think it’s going to keep growing, and we’re putting a lot of focus on the energy storage side, on the product development side. It’s a big focus for us because we know it’s going to be a big part of the future here for the industry.

Kerim: Let’s talk a little bit more about the customer-centric engineering decisions you made around the storage solutions. I remember talking about battery packs, racks, containers, were specifically designed for applications. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Anton: You’re talking about how we think about the energy storage products. 

Kerim: Yeah. I kind of remember not only the batteries, but also maybe the way you package them or you deliver them were in some way, customer-centric to their requirements. 

Anton: There are several different parts of the energy storage side that we look at to make sure we have the right solutions for our customers.

I think how the equipment is packaged is one big part of it. Like I said, with our commercial systems having it all integrated in one cabinet, so that you’re not having to connect different components, you’re able to really just drop it on onto the site and interconnect it to the site loads and then the utilities — 

Kerim: That also applies to the batteries, not just the inverters, but also the batteries. 

Anton: For our commercial. Our latest commercial energy storage system has in one cabinet, the batteries connected to the inverters. You’re really not touching any of those connections. It’s all pre-wired, communication’s all there. It really makes it kind of a simple, easy install. 

Utility-scale is different. We have our 2.4 megawatt inverter that would connect to the 5 megawatt-hour batteries. I think at that scale, it’s a little more challenging to have it all in one cabinet. But for commercial, that’s one thing that I think we were excited about and took from the market of like, a lot of the industry is either relatively new or new to energy storage, so new to the designs, new to the installs. 

As much as we can make it simple and easy, I think is going to help our customers and the industry grow on that side. There are also other things like certifications that I think different standards are evolving quickly on the energy storage side, whether it’s safety standards with batteries, fire codes, all these different things that are related to the batteries. National Electric Code, there are lots of different code updates related to batteries these days.

We are putting a lot of effort into getting ahead of what’s going to be required for projects, things like NFPA, certifications, 9540A certifications. 

I guess listing or standard has been power control systems. Our energy storage inverters are listed as certified power control systems. We found that as something that helps make the interconnection with the utility simpler and easier, or at least provides a solution for easily getting projects permitted and interconnected.

CPS Product Updates and Innovation Day

Kerim: Well, as we come to the end of our conversation, maybe tell us a little bit about your final thoughts. What’s ahead for CPS? Any wishes from the universe that you would like to see in your part of the work world, over there? 

Anton: Let’s see. I mean, if there are any EPCs, developers out there who are working on projects, definitely reach out to our team, our apps engineers, and our product team. We’re happy to go over our latest products and innovations and what’s coming. Some exciting products being launched this year. We have some new products that we’re announcing at RE+ in Las Vegas this year.

We definitely encourage anybody there to come by our booth, and check out our latest product innovations. And I think in general, that’s been valuable for us, and I think our customers on the innovation side is having close communication, collaboration with many in the industry of what are the latest needs? What’s coming? And that helps us figure out what products to develop.

We obviously meet a ton with our customers, different EPCs, and developers. We also have different events like our Innovation Day Event that we have at our headquarters in Texas every year. That’s been a great opportunity to work closely with our key customers, and showcase and get feedback on our products.

A big part of our strategy has been to be a trusted partner in the industry, not just to provide equipment for projects, but be there to provide support for projects, and help provide solutions, to help grow the industry in this energy transition and move towards sustainability. 

Kerim: Anton Patton of CPS, thank you very much, the VP of Product at CPS sharing his insights and knowledge on C&I inverters and the leading C&I inverter provider in the American market. 

We learned a ton about your innovation techniques and how you go to market. Thanks for this conversation.