SMA Solar Technology AG, with sales of €760 million in 2018 and annual inverter production totalling over 8 GW of rated inverter power, is one of the world's leading solar and battery inverter manufacturers and a specialist in PV system solutions. It has its headquarters in Niestetal near Kassel and is represented on four continents in more than 20 countries by foreign subsidiaries. The group of companies employs more than 3,000 people and produces a wide range of inverter types, offering suitable PV and battery inverters for all photovoltaic applications and all power sizes of PV systems and storage systems. The product range includes inverters for both grid-connected PV systems and stand-alone systems. In particular, this also includes innovative system solutions for grid integration of photovoltaics and for large solar power plants, including battery storage, energy management systems as well as monitoring, communication and portal solutions.

As a technology and innovation leader, SMA has more than three decades of experience in the field of inverter development and their system integration in energy supply systems, interconnected and stand-alone grids. In addition to the actual product development of new inverter systems, the R&D engineers of the various development departments at SMA also deal with a wide range of higher-level issues within the scope of numerous cooperation projects, which currently focus primarily on the topics of grid integration, power supply conversion and new PV system solutions. SMA's task in the DC-INDUSTRIE2 consortium is the investigation and realisation of power converter technology for the optimised integration of photovoltaic and battery storage systems in DC industrial grids - including corresponding energy management system solutions - as well as the bidirectional active front end, which forms the power electronic connection to the interconnected grid.