Contacts:          Yael Eldar                                       Martin Gleissner

                            SolarEdge                                      Schwartz Communications

                            +972-54-4419940                        +46 (0)8 599 085 85

                            Yael.E@solaredge.com              solaredge@schwartz-pr.com

SCHOTT Solar and SolarEdge Partner to Develop Power Harvesting System

Leading Global Companies in Design Partnership to Test Holistic PV Solution 

Hertzlia, Israel and Alzenau, Germany—May 29, 2009—SCHOTT Solar and SolarEdge today announced a joint design partnership agreement to develop and test a novel PV panel-integrated power harvesting system embedded directly into SCHOTT Solar’s modules. The outcome of the joint efforts will maximize power generation throughout the solar lifecycle while dramatically reducing complexities and costs.

While the solar industry has taken enormous strides to speed cell efficiency and other innovations, there are widely adopted array designs and system architectures that inherently create room for improvement. New architecture and standard design activate considerable power per solar field, as well as monitoring. Poor roof utilization, fire and maintenance safety issues, and ineffective panel theft prevention measures can be avoided.

“SolarEdge is an innovative company offering an original multi-disciplinary system solution that we at SCHOTT Solar are extremely impressed with,” said Jürgen Fortenbacher, Head Strategy & Business Development at SCHOTT Solar. “We believe that the outcome of our partnership will significantly enhance power output.”
“We are extremely honored to work with a leading industry player such as SCHOTT Solar,” said Guy Sella, chairman, CEO and founder of SolarEdge. “By combining both our technologies we will be able to make PV technology more efficient while at the same time reducing costs.”

SCHOTT Solar is embedding SolarEdge’s active electronics directly into their panels in order to achieve optimal power yield while reducing these installation and maintenance challenges and costs. The two partner companies are currently testing the combined technologies.

About SolarEdge
SolarEdge is a provider of smart, holistic PV power harvesting and monitoring solutions for maximum energy and cost efficiency. The company works with industry-leading partners to embed its active electronic solution directly into PV panels. Unlike centralized architectures that cannot optimize the power of each panel, only SolarEdge performs MPPT per panel while communicating across existing power lines for granular visibility and control. As a result, our systemic holistic approach provides more power from any given installation, eliminates design constraints, provides complete visibility, solves all safety issues and provides anti-theft without increasing power harvesting costs.

About SCHOTT
SCHOTT Solar, with its high quality products, enables the potential of the sun as a nearly inexhaustible source of energy to be utilized. And it’s for exactly that reason that SCHOTT Solar produces important components for photovoltaic applications and solar energy plants. In the photovoltaic industry, the company is one of the few integrated manufacturers of crystalline silicon wafers, cells and modules. The production of the wafers is ensured by the WACKER SCHOTT Solar joint venture, which also secures the supply of silicon, enabling long-term growth. In thin-film technology, SCHOTT Solar also describes itself an advanced supplier due to having over twenty years of experience. And in the production of receivers for solar power plants, SCHOTT Solar sees itself as a market and technology leader. The receivers are key components in large-scale power plants that generate electricity from solar energy centrally on the basis of parabolic trough technology and are able to supply entire cities with power. SCHOTT Solar has production facilities in Germany, the Czech Republic, the USA and Spain. The innovative power and technological competence of the company date back to the late 1950s. SCHOTT Solar GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of the international SCHOTT technology group. SCHOTT develops special materials, components and systems for the household appliance, pharmaceutical, solar energy, electronics, optical and automotive industries. With around 17,300 employees, the SCHOTT Group generated a worldwide turnover of about 2.2 billion Euros in fiscal year 2007/2008.