Since December 2017, Ecori has been the official distributor of SolarEdge in Brazil. The company was the first to bring the brand to the Brazilian photovoltaic market.
According to Leandro Martins, co-founder and CEO of Ecori, the distributor of photovoltaic equipment entered the MLPE category – which encompasses micro inverters and power optimizers – in 2014, after establishing a partnership with APsystems, a manufacturer of microinverters.
In search of new partners, the company considered a study of the North American and European solar market, in which SolarEdge was identified as a leader in the optimizer category.
“SolarEdge technology brings security, monitoring per module, greater control, lower liabilities for the customer, integrators and suppliers”, says Martins.
He also reports that the first contact with SolarEdge was in 2015, and that negotiations did not go ahead at the time because the Brazilian photovoltaic market was still small.
Two years after the first contact, Arthur Santini, director of Ecori, met with SolarEdge during the American edition of InterSolar. During the meeting, Santini explained the company's business model, presented projections for the Brazilian sector and explained how taxes work in Brazil.
“They understood Ecori’s situation and the Brazilian market in relation to DG (distributed generation). Furthermore, they also understood a little more about how Brazil works”, says Santini.
The meeting was decisive for the partnership to be signed at the end of 2017. The next step was a visit by the Ecori team to the SolarEdge unit in Israel, to get to know and learn about the system during a three-day training on the solution.
Currently, Ecori offers the same training for partner companies that do not know or do not yet work with SolarEdge technology. “Our intention is for them to gain this knowledge and be able to replicate it”, comments Martins.
The executive also says that an important step for Ecori was the arrival of Yoni Ziv as vice president of the company. “Yoni participated in the negotiations with SolarEdge and has a lot of experience in the global photovoltaic market. He accepted our invitation to work at Ecori and took on a vice-presidency position. He is our representative in Israel and believes in the company’s potential in the photovoltaic segment.”
Ecori has 70% of the Brazilian MLPE market. Even with the pandemic, the company grew 150% in the Brazilian DG market in 2020, compared to 2019.
Image: Ecori/Reproduction
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