International A recipe for growth The Intersolar event series has developed from a one-day solar conference in Pforzheim, Germany in 1991 to a series of exhibitions and conferences spanning three continents. December will see the premiere of Intersolar China. SUN & WIND ENERGY casts light on the international development of the trade fair. There were 300 conference participants and five exhibitors at the accompanying trade show; the whole thing was hosted in the Pforzheim city hall in southwest Germany. That was how the one-day Solar 91 looked, the seed that grew into today s Intersolar. Twenty years later, Intersolar can keep pace with other leading industry conferences. More than 2,000 manufacturers and service providers occupy 15 of the 16 halls at the Munich International Trade Fair. Event organisers, Solar Promotion GmbH and Messe Freiburg, expect some 2,500 participants. Germany s largest solar exhibition has long since gone international. In 2008, Intersolar North America had its premiere, and in 2009 the first Intersolar India took place. Intersolar China will be held for the first time at the end of this year. The internationalisation marches on, even if everything does not always work out just as Solar Promotion CEO Markus Elsässer would like. Ever since 2000, when Solar was moved from Pforzheim to Freiburg for space reasons and renamed Intersolar, internationalisation has been the stated goal. In Freiburg, that also meant that the organisers wanted to lure as many foreign industry visitors and official delegations as possible to the conference. With the switch to Munich in 2007, Elsässer and his team changed their strategy. They began initiating trade fairs in aspiring solar markets around the globe. Intersolar North America Solar array on the roof of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, location for the US Intersolar Photo: John Louie/SMG/SFCF Because the US is considered one of the most promising solar markets, it made sense to establish a foothold there. The Intersolar organisers found support in physics professor Eicke Weber. After 23 years of research in the US, most recently at the University of California Berkeley, he returned to Germany to head up the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Freiburg. Weber initiated the cooperation between Solar Promotion and the semiconductor association SEMI. Together, SEMI s PV Group and Solar Promotion set up the first Intersolar North America in 2008 the two have cooperated ever since. 120 Sun & Wind Energy 5/2011
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International After its start in 2009, Intersolar India has moved from Hyderabad to Mumbai. In 2011, organisers expect 6,000 visitors to come. In the first year, the conference was very large compared with the exhibition, says Elsässer. Some 1,400 participants came to the conference; 13,000 industry professionals came to the exhibition at San Francisco s Moscone Center. The weighting has shif ted since then. The visitor numbers are now in the 20,000 range and the conference has some 1,700 participants. Some two-thirds of the 580 total exhibitors were US firms in 2010; the rest were German and Chinese manufacturers and a small number of providers from other countries (e.g. South Korea and Spain). Until 2010, Intersolar North America faced keen competition from Solar Power, the largest US solar exhibit and conference. It was traditionally also held in California. But to the delight of the SEMI PV Group and Solar Promotion, its promoters decided to hold the conference at different locations. This year, for instance, Solar Power will be held in Dallas, Texas. In 2012, Florida will play host to the conference, and in 2013, it will be in Chicago. The US solar branch now has the choice between a rotating exhibition in different states and a fixed local solar trade fair. That has apparently had a positive impact on Intersolar. This year, Solar Promotion expects 800 exhibitors and 22,000 visitors at Intersolar North America. Since last year, Solar Promotion has been cooperating on the Indian event with MMI India Pvt Ltd., a fully owned subsidiary of Messe München International. The event s steady growth is characteristic of the Intersolar events. That is true even for India which has, by far, the smallest Intersolar. In 2009 some 60 exhibitors showed their products; in 2010 it was nearly 150. This year, Solar Promotion expects 250 exhibitors and 6,000 visitors. The promoters have booked a hall in the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai. That roughly corresponds to two halls in Munich, says Elsässer. The decision was made to get into the Indian market early, according to the Solar Promotion executive, considering figures that reminded him of the early days in Pforzheim and the German solar market of the 1990s. India has a huge demand for energy and good insolation. And there is a political target, the National Solar Mission. The mission aims at realising the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy target of 20 GW of solar capacity installed on the Indian subcontinent by 2022. The first of three phases, linked to specific interim goals, runs from 2012 to 2013; the second is from 2013 to 2017; and the third runs from 2017 to 2022. A positive aspect is that the government strategy covers both PV and solar thermal. But much is still unclear in the Indian market. Intersolar China Until recently, it was also unclear whether Intersolar China would see its premiere this year. There were plans to postpone it until 2012. The Solar Promotion website says, This decision is based on diverse factors, including unfavourable scheduling conflicts with other solar events taking place in Shanghai, China. The main factor was the conflict with the SNEC PV Power Expo in Shanghai. SNEC was rescheduled from May to February, explains Markus Elsässer. That is also when Solar Promotion, Messe Freiburg, and SEMI PV want to put on Intersolar in Shanghai. Having two events so close together would have been bad for the industry, he explains. The new Intersolar India In 2009 Solar Promotion welcomed visitors for the first time to Intersolar in India. In the run-up to the event, the company also cooperated with the SEMI PV Group. It was a co-branded event, says Elsässer, which is to say that while semiconductor association SEMI invited visitors to its Indian Solarcon conference, Solar Promotion simultaneously held Intersolar. The two co-hosted the event. In the first year, Intersolar/Solarcon took place in Hyderabad. Solarcon stayed there in the following year as well, but Intersolar India moved to Mumbai. The city is more central and the location is more interesting, says Elsässer, explaining the switch. There were also different visions of how the event should develop. Cooperation with SEMI India ended. Professor Juzer Vasi, Indian Institute of Technology, Deepak Gupta, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, India, and V.S. Verma, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, opening the 2010 Intersolar India Conference Photos (2): Intersolar India 122 Sun & Wind Energy 5/2011
solution looks like this: the Asian Intersolar will no longer take place in the key industry city of Shanghai, but rather in the capital city of Beijing. A full 16,500 m² of exhibition space is booked in the China National Convention Center (CNCC). Furthermore, the trade fair and conference were postponed until 7 to 9 December. The organisers expect some 250 exhibitors, more than 7,500 visitors and 700 conference participants. Our goal is to be present on every continent, says Elsässer. We want to go where the sales markets are. While China is presently still a production island, he explained, the hope is that it will become a sales market. From a single mould Solar Promotion also wants to standardise its processes. It wants to structure the conferences the same way everywhere, and that also goes for the way the exhibition is organised for exhibitors. The intent is that organisations exhibiting at multiple Intersolar events should, get all of their services from the same mould, says Elsässer. That gives them one point of contact for all of the events. Solar Promotion cooperates with twelve representatives from around the globe to serve exhibitors. Among its partners are Expo-Consult & Service in the Czech Republic and the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Canada and Greece. One step toward uniformity is the Intersolar Award, which will be presented once again this year at Intersolar in Munich. Exhibitors at the Intersolar events, some 3,000 companies, can compete with their products to be recognised for outstanding innovation and forward thinking. Nevertheless, the focus of Intersolar is still Germany. It has not even been five years since the switch from Freiburg to Munich, but it appears that soon Munich might even be too small. This year, more than 2,000 exhibitors will be spread across 160,000 m² of exhibition area. A single empty hall is all that remains. Last year Automatica, the robotics and mechatronics industry trade fair, ran parallel to Intersolar. That was desirable, since there is some overlap between the two target groups. This year, there would not have been enough space for both trade fairs. Solar Promotion thus considers it a stroke of luck that Automatica is only held every two years. After all, Intersolar s organisers can put the free exhibition halls to good use. Next year, Automatica will not run parallel to Intersolar, says a relieved Elsässer. But where will Intersolar go when the 16 exhibition halls are no longer adequate? Will lightweight halls be built at the former airport as an emergency solution, like those in Freiburg in the final years? Nobody knows how the market will develop, says Elsässer, pointing out the coming reductions in PV incentives. Elsässer considers Munich a very good location. The cooperation with the exhibition centre there has been outstanding, he says. The airport is a benefit. And the number of solar installations in Bavaria also speaks for the location. In Germany, only the exhibition centres in Hanover, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Frankfurt are larger. Elsässer does not want to consider a change of venue yet. He prefers to extend the capacity in Munich. Rows A and B on the exhibition grounds have six halls each but row C, with its four halls, has additional capacity. There are longstanding plans for expansion, says Elsässer. Nevertheless, he is still hoping for another development: that the international solar market will grow faster. When the trade fairs in San Francisco, Mumbai and, if possible, Beijing get larger, the exhibitors will distribute themselves better. That was the intent of internationalisation, at any rate. The countries we expected to develop quickly have not done so, regrets Elsässer, mentioning the US. The installed capacity in the US is still far behind the expectations of market experts, and that has an effect on the number of exhibitors at Intersolar North America. But for this year 2,000 MW are expected in the US, says Elsässer. As the market develops, the shift will come. Ina Röpcke Further information: Intersolar Europe: www.intersolar.de Intersolar North America: www.intersolar.us Intersolar India: www.intersolar.in Intersolar China: www.intersolarchina.com Freiburg Wirtschaft Touristik und Messe GmbH & Co. KG (FWTM): www.messe.freiburg.de Messe München GmbH: www.messe-muenchen.de Markus Elsässer, CEO of Intersolar s organising company Solar Promotion Photo: Intersolar / Solar Promotion The first Intersolar China will open its gates in the China National Convention Center in Beijing in December 2011. Photo: CNCC China