How has the year 2020 been for Fox-ESS? How did the company tackle the Covid crisis?
The year 2020 was a tough year for everyone and it presented Fox with many challenges. Thankfully, owing to the hard work, dedication and ingenuity of our workforce, we were able to negotiate these challenges and continue to grow and we enter 2021 in a very strong position. The company is now operating at full capacity and in as normal fashion as possible, employing all of the necessary safety measures at every stage of the process; through production, packing and despatch.
Please tell us in brief about the key product offerings of your company.
Fox is a subsidiary of Tsingshan Group, a Fortune 500 company with annual sales revenues in 2019 of 37.6 billion USD. It is the world’s largest stainless steel manufacturer and operates the world’s largest nickel mining and production hub in Indonesia. The company is aggressively stepping into position for the energy transition with its investment in Fox, a new company specialising in the development, production, and distribution of distributed generation products and solutions for the residential PV and ESS market as well as the commercial solar and storage market, with a product range that includes grid-tied inverters, hybrid inverters, lithium batteries and battery cells.
The Fox inverter range aimed mainly at the ‘rooftop’ sector is available from 1-25kW, with single and 3-phase options available. Fox will soon introduce a range of utility-scale inverters sized from 25 to 100kW
What have been the trends in the solar inverter market globally and in India in 2020?
The global energy storage sector has seen substantial growth over the past year, and we see this growth accelerating further over the next 12 months. We see this trend being mirrored in India where we detect a growing demand for energy storage products.
Fox is ideally placed to cater for this market. We are part of the Tsingshan Group, so we have vertically integrated supply chains and therefore have chargers and hybrid inverters within our portfolio, as well as our own range of lithium batteries. Our full range of storage solutions will be launched in India very soon.
What makes your inverter products unique and different from competitors?
Fox believes India is a very promising market and wants to play a significant role in India’s solar demand. Fox is revolutionising the solar and storage sectors with ground-breaking product developments, a vertical supply chain that is driving up quality and driving down costs, and an unswerving commitment to after sales care. By controlling the supply chain, Fox able to offer the high-quality products with an attractive price to be more competitive in this market.
Fox inverters are precision engineered to provide maximum performance, efficiency, reliability and longevity. They incorporate a unique heat-sink and cooling fin design that is integrated into the inverter casing to ensure optimal direct contact with heat generating components. The pioneering fin design creates a larger surface area and this larger contact surface greatly increases the cooling effect, increasing the heat transfer ability of the inverter by up to 30% when compared to other leading brands.
In addition to reducing heat stress, the R&D team at Fox paid special attention to the inverter capacitors, the most expensive electrical component. Fox has selected the market-leading tier one brand for their inverters. A key factor impacting on capacitor lifespan is their capacity to store charge during each cycle, and Fox have scaled up the number of capacitors, decreasing the amount of charge stored and prolonging the lifespan of the inverter.
What plans do you have for your storage products for this year?
We already have a wide range of storage products available and will be expanding this with a view to launching the full range by the end of Q2 2021.
In India, we will be making available chargers, hybrid inverters, batteries, fully integrated storage systems and battery cells. We have high expectations and recognise that the energy storage market in India is very buoyant, and Fox is ideally placed to be at the forefront of that growth.
As a relatively new entrant into the Indian market, we are already receiving very positive feedback, thanks to our unswerving commitment to both product quality and customer service. We look forward to building on that success in the coming year.
