Dr. Praveen Jain reports

SPARQ SYSTEMS ENTERS INTO TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP WITH JIO THINGS

Sparq Systems Inc. has signed a manufacturing and supply agreement with Jio Things Ltd., a leading technology player in India and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms Ltd. (JPL), India's largest digital services player, dated Feb. 7, 2024, whereby the parties will collaborate to develop, manufacture and distribute microinverters in India, and incorporate Sparq's microinverters into Jio Things' solutions globally.

"It is a tremendous opportunity for Sparq to be able to partner with Jio Things. Jio's existing strengths in communications, cloud computing and IoT platforms, will enable a more comprehensive and scalable approach in developing new products for energy solutions. We expect that the combination of Jio's scale and technology-leadership and Sparq's software-centric design to enable large-scale manufacturing of microinverters at a competitive cost. In this way, the collaboration will allow us to offer a high-performance solution at a low cost," says Dr. Praveen Jain, chief executive officer of Sparq.

"We believe that this is a transformative agreement for Sparq. It is a tremendous endorsement of our unique technology to have been selected as technology partner to one of the world's largest and most innovative companies. We look forward to contributing to Jio's efforts to deliver innovative products and solutions to the market at prices and volumes that we expect will fundamentally alter industry dynamics," added Ravi Sood, chairman of Sparq.

The agreement sets out a framework under which Sparq and Jio will collaborate to innovate and develop new products. Sparq will engage a third party contract manufacturing base in India to manufacture its microinverters.

The agreement provides for a long-term partnership leveraging each other's strengths to positively impact the industry, as well as certain volume commitments for the initial few years until the capacity volume is stabilized. The agreement also provides Sparq with certain agreed product margins.

About Sparq Systems Inc.

Sparq designs and manufactures next-generation single-phase microinverters for residential and commercial solar electric applications. Sparq's advanced microinverter approach is based upon a unique high-frequency switching architecture that incorporates only long-lasting hardware components and is driven by advanced software-based algorithms. This makes for a microinverter design that is very compact, lightweight, low-cost, highly reliable, very flexible and, as such, attractive for many PV applications.

Sparq has developed a proprietary PV solution called the Quad; the Quad inverter optimizes four PV modules with a single microinverter, simplifying design and installation, and lowering cost for solar power installations when compared with existing market offerings.

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