REC Now #3 In US Residential Solar Market

The Norwegian company REC Group is now the third-biggest solar photovoltaic (PV) module supplier in the US residential market, according to recent reports.

This follows a 5-fold increase in market share over the last year — following the imposition in the US of duties on Chinese solar PV providers. The company is reportedly expecting that its market share will continue increasing notably over the rest of 2015.

The company — which utilizes vertically integrated PV manufacturing facilities in Singapore — currently possesses a ~14% market share (up from a 2.7% market-share in Q1 2014). The company is also the top solar PV supplier in the Californian market, which makes sense considering the direct shipping routes from Singapore.

“(The trade rulings) certainly did not have a negative impact on our business,” stated REC Senior VP and Managing Director Arndt Lutz in a recent interview. “It opened the door for some of our customers that we were working with.” (You might say it was about “picking winners and losers,” of which Chinese companies were the losers.)

While some of the top solar leasing/sales companies in the US (SolarCity, Sunrun) are customers of REC, the company’s customer base is apparently much more diverse.

“We know all the big solar residential installers and have worked with them,” stated Lutz.

The company’s relatively new TwinPeak offering shows that part of the recent success has been down to technological changes as well — as the offering was a winner of the recent Intersolar Award in the Photovoltaics category. It offers 15–20 watts of generation capacity more than most similarly priced multi-crystalline modules.

According to Lutz, the aim is for TwinPeak to comprise roughly half of the company’s offerings into the US residential market for the time being. As of the second quarter of 2015, around 50% of the company’s business is now in the US.

Regardless of REC’s ability to capitalize on the recent tariff imposition, the two top companies in the US residential market are still Chinese ones — Canadian Solar and Trina Solar.