Solar Power World

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Inverter manufacturer SMA America‘s Sunny PRO Club—a membership-based professional partnership program for solar installers—has extended its Regional Forums through 2012. This year, its slate of technical training, hands-on product workshops and informative presentations was expanded to include micro-string hybrid photovoltaic (PV) systems, SMA’s monitoring and off-grid solar inverter product lines and SMA Service. Sixteen events—free with pre-registration—are already planned for select cities throughout the U.S. and Canada this year, with the first scheduled for Raleigh, N.C. on January 24.

“Regional Forums allow Sunny PRO Club members and non-members to participate in exclusive educational opportunities from SMA,” said Ciara Wakefield, Sunny PRO Club manager for SMA America and SMA Canada. “In addition to learning more about SMA products and their uses in residential and commercial photovoltaic systems, Regional Forum attendees can also gather information about the technical and marketing resources available to Sunny PRO Club members.”

Each Regional Forum includes technical training sessions by the SMA Solar Academy. The Boost Your Profits: Best Practices for Residential Design training session provides an overview of tools—such as SMA’s Sunny Design and Solarchecker software—that help installers optimize their PV systems. Another training session, Grow Your Business: Commercial Systems Made Easy, explains how installers can apply their existing experience and knowledge in the residential market to expand into small commercial applications through decentralized PV system concepts. Monitoring Makes Cents: Increase Profitability and Performance through Communicationsintroduces the SMA family of monitoring systems, with particular emphasis on how to set up and use the Sunny Portal to track multiple arrays. Information about island and battery-backup systems for residential and commercial applications is included in the session entitled The Gold Standard in Off-Grid and Battery Management Systems: Sunny Island Technical Overview. Finally, A New Standard in Residential Inverters: Sunny Boy HF is a hands-on workshop that now includes information about micro-string hybrid systems, as well as a sneak peek of SMA’s upcoming Sunny Boy 240 micro inverter.

Rounding out the Regional Forum schedule are presentations by the SMA Service and Sunny PRO Club teams. SMA Service offers priority technical support for Sunny PRO Club members. Regional Forum attendees can learn more about these services, as well as have exclusive access to SMA Service personnel. During the Sunny PRO Club presentation, attendees can learn how their market effectiveness and sales can improve through exclusive technical benefits and discounted custom marketing support materials.

There also is a panel discussion with SMA Sales, Service, Solar Academy and Sunny PRO Club representatives.

For more information about the Regional Forums and to register, please visit www.SMARegionalForums.com.

REGIONAL FORUM SCHEDULE

1/24/12, RALEIGH: Sheraton Raleigh Hotel, 421 S. Salisbury Street, Raleigh, NC  27601

1/26/12, TAMPA: Marriott Tampa Airport, Tampa International Airport, 4200 George J. Bean Parkway, Tampa FL  33607

2/9/12, HONOLULU: Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, 2552 Kalakaua Avenue, Honolulu, HI  95815

2/28/12, LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles Airport Marriott, 5855 West Century Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA  90045

3/13/12, DENVER: Renaissance Denver Hotel, 3801 Quebec Street, Denver CO  80207

3/22/12, BOSTON: Boston Marriott Copley Place, 110 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA  02116

3/27/12, TORONTO: Hilton Toronto Airport, 5875 Airport Road, Mississauga, ON  L4V 1N1

4/17/12, NEWARK: Location TBD

Additional cities scheduled for 2012: Long Island, NY; Santa Fe, NM; Austin, TX; Nashville, TN; Kansas City, MO; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; and Phoenix, AZ. More details about these events will follow.