András Petre, Founder and Managing Director

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” - Peter Ferdinand Drucker

András Petre started working in the Hungarian solar business in 2010, at the height of the financial crisis, as one of the few pioneers of the industry in Hungary, and two years later he launched EU-Solar. Unfortunately, the economic situation in 2012 was not conducive to residential solar developments, which require significant investment. At the same time, the advantage of starting the business was that the household solar sector, which had already experienced significant development worldwide, was still in its infancy in Hungary, so the new market was essentially discovered and developed by early entrants. “In a way, it was good that the so- lar sector started so slowly in Hungary, because it gave us time to develop with the market”, recalls the founder and head of the company. Having established his experience in California, which is already highly developed in solar projects, he believes that starting in difficult years was a great decision.

From the very beginning, the company’s manager has based his strategy on a pure market-based operation, development, continuous learning and professionalisation, based on the principle of high added value.

“Declared quality is important to us in all areas, which is why we chose one of the four largest audit firms to audit our then small company in 2015, a move that proved to be one of the best decisions for our business and our collaboration has continued unbroken ever since.”

After several years of study, professional experience and preparation, András Petre set out to realise his dream and start his business as one of the pioneers of the Hungarian solar industry. He has a wide range of expertise in DC power, which has been a major advantage in the solar sector. His knowledge of industrial electronics, acquired at the Károly Zipernovszki Mechanical Engineering Technical School, and later expanded, greatly helped his understanding and the rapid development of the company in the early days. Solar panels produce direct current from the sun’s rays, which is converted into alternating current by the other main component of the solar system, the inverter.

In addition to the general prerequisites for business success— such as perseverance, creativity, motivation, commitment, social utility, diligence, etc.—András Petre had four aces to win: the advantage of early market entry, significant experience abroad, expertise and the value provided by the collaboration with PwC. The continuous hard work invested paid off in a relatively short period of time: in 2015, the third full business year after its establishment, EU-Solar reached a sales revenue of HUF 1 billion, operating entirely on a market basis.

The company’s strategy is based on retail sales, which is the most market-driven area. Because of the number of transactions, retail is the most energy-intensive part of the market for the same revenue, as every single customer has to be informed and supported individually, and orders have to be passed through the process one by one. “We needed a serious organisation to take each project from customer acquisition to the installation of the solar system in a controlled way. That is why we’ve created an ERP system to serve this work efficiently. This decision was a large-scale investment, not without risk, but it has become the key to the current upscaling. It was not only a step up, but also a competitive advantage, as the majority of Hungarian SMEs are not yet sufficiently prepared in this field.”

After starting with two employees in 2012, EU-Solar has 50 employees by 2020 and 70 by mid-2021, with contractors and distributors joining as subcontractors to form an extensive network, making the company a large enterprise with 800 employees. “One of the keys to our success is that we work with excellent, motivated and skilled people. We place great emphasis on maintaining this motivation: providing them with an attractive vision, a 21st century environment and conditions, and opportunities for development, which has won us the Workplace to Love award”.

“The key to success, development and professionalism is continuous learning. The high level and up-to-date training of our staff and contractors, in both theory and practically, is of par- amount importance to us. As a result of several years of work, we’ve created a thematised, continuously developed and updated knowledge base, which forms the basis of our training repertoire, which approaches the solar field from several perspectives. Since 2017, EU-Solar Zrt. has been operating as a state-licensed adult training institution (EDU-Solar), providing, among other things, professional training for solar installers, which is available to all professionals in the country who set high standards for themselves and want to train themselves.

In addition to increasing sales, the company’s medium- and long-term plans include entering foreign markets, with expansion in Croatia and Romania as the first targets.

The company also has two industrial innovations (patents) that go beyond the solar field and have potential for electric cars, e-car charging and energy storage.

“Going international, electric car charging, battery systems— we have products and plans for the future”, András Petre summarised ambitiously.