Chinese PV inverter manufacturing company Sungrow, founded in 1997, packages itself as a “global leader in renewable energy technology” that “has pioneered sustainable power solutions for over 28 years” - and few in Asia would argue.

Sungrow Power Korea (SPK) meanwhile is its much younger cousin across the Yellow Sea in South Korea, but already offers a wide-reaching product line including what the firm deems “total solutions across the entire renewable energy sector, including commercial and residential ESS systems, floating solar power, and electric vehicle charging systems.”

Sungrow global

As part of the wider Sungrow family, itself represented to varying degrees “in over 150 countries around the world” SPK's growing profile around South Korea illustrates clearly how an international supplier of solar and storage technology can be both a market entrant and a consolidator of local project supply chains at the same time.

Active in Korea since its founding in 2017, has been concentrated on supplying inverters for utility and commercial solar projects, introducing certified string inverters for domestic use, and promoting packaged battery-storage solutions to grid and commercial customers according to staff manning the company booth at the 2025 Korea Energy Show in Busan this August.

At present, commercial cases on the southern half of the Korean peninsula rest on three linked claims including product breadth, local service capabilities and the all-important competitive pricing factor.

To this end, according to one of SPK’s ‘Solution Engineering Leaders’ in Busan, the firm markets a full portfolio that spans residential and commercial inverters, power conversion systems (PCS) for battery systems, as well as lithium-ion battery modules and energy-management software - a combination intended to capture value across the “solar + storage” stack.

Much of this package is put together on the premise that it is more attractive to large project developers looking for a single supplier for both conversion hardware and energy-management functionality, on the grounds that system engineering, and warranty and performance guarantees are simpler to manage when components are sourced all together.

Local efforts

On the ground in South Korea, Sungrow has spent the past few years working to establish itself in the market by way of local partnerships and trade-show appearances. The company has showcased various KS-certified string inverters and modular systems at Korea’s Green Energy Expo and other trade events, while local management has, sources at the firm say to AsiaElec, emphasised service and after-sales support as differentiators in a market where long project lifetimes make maintenance a crucial commercial priority.

According to company announcements and trade coverage, the firm has already supplied inverters to multiple large projects in Korea and claimed in excess of 1GW of cumulative deployments across the country, in what is seen as a clear indicator of SPK working to carve out a niche for itself in the Korean PV supply chain sector.

Fitting in

Just how Sungrow fits into South Korea’s wider energy-storage sector though is seen as depending both on market structure and evolving domestic capability. South Korea’s ESS market is growing rapidly, driven by government-backed and private sector renewables targets as well as by domestic battery makers including LG Energy Solution, SK On and Samsung SDI.

This in turn shifts capacity towards stationary storage with local battery manufacturers, government procurement and grid-scale projects all creating a context in which system integrators can sell packaged ESS solutions - while local firms supply cells or battery packs.

To this end, recent deals by Korean cell manufacturers to secure ESS supply contracts underline a notable pivot that, unfortunately for Sungrow, limits the addressable market for foreign battery suppliers to some extent, but it is a market leaving room for international integrators that combine PCS, software and system design - as Reuters reported in early September.

Local competition

Because of this, competition in Korea is seen as twofold; established European, Japanese and US inverter and PCS suppliers competing on performance, certification and service on the one hand. On the other meanwhile, local battery makers and larger conglomerates are moving upstream into systems and integration, challenging outsiders on cost and local content. As such, Sungrow’s route to growth backed by its almost 30 years of sector-wide experience in China and elsewhere, is to emphasise system integration skills, local certification, and everyday field service offers – all seen as aspects of the industry that can help compensate to some degree for political or procurement preferences for domestic Korean suppliers.

Notwithstanding local preferences, risk factors are not being ignored, however. Korean energy procurement is more often than not influenced by industrial policy, and crucially national security considerations – always a factor when China or Chinese entities are involved – as well as a strong bias in some tenders towards domestic suppliers; an issue seen across East Asian markets of all types.

This, coupled to wider geopolitical sensitivities about technology supply chains has made some Korean buyers cautious about sourcing strategic energy infrastructure components from companies headquartered in jurisdictions perceived as politically sensitive – ie. China.

For an overseas supplier such as Sungrow, even with local representation therefore, transparency in supply chains, robust local support and alignment with Korean technical standards are therefore key commercial necessities.

For now, Sungrow’s presence in South Korea is one of a capable systems supplier with a Chinese background carving a role between local battery manufacturers and international equipment vendors, and as of late-2025 the company’s strength lies in a broad product set and far-reaching solutions that appeal to developers seeking turnkey inverter-plus-storage offerings.

How far it can expand will depend on its ability to increase local partnerships as it secures certification and service footprints.