Privacy Policy

December 13, 2022

GoodWe Solar Community’s Commitment to Privacy

GoodWe Solar Community’ is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring you have a positive experience on our websites and Community. Your ability to make informed choices about the uses of your information is important to us.

This Privacy Policy describes the rights and choices available to individuals with respect to their information. We use the reference to “Customer” to describe anyone who uses GoodWe services or products or, has registered for an online account with us for the use of any portion of the Service (each, an “GoodWe Solar Community Account”) or has visited our websites. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, it is your choice to not use the Service. GoodWe Solar Community may provide additional or supplemental privacy policies to individuals for specific products or services that we offer at the time we collect personal information. These supplemental privacy policies will govern how we may process the information in the context of the specific product or service.

This statement applies to all forms of use of our services, irrespective of whether such use is free of charge or subject to a fee. GoodWe Solar Community wishes to inform you below in particular about what data it collects and how such data are used. You are also informed that your (personal) data are collected on our websites and stored electronically. All data are stored and processed by us in compliance with the relevant statutory regulations of the European Union on data privacy and data security – General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You may view, download or print out the Terms of Use and the GoodWe Solar Community data privacy statement at any time at https://community.goodwe.com/. You must accept this data protection statement to visit our websites and use our services.

We provide important information for California residents below.

We provide important information for individuals located in the European Economic Area and United Kingdom (collectively, “Europe” or “European”) below.

Information We Collect

1. Information You Provide to Us
We collect information you provide to us directly when you use the Services. This includes:

Account information	A form of address, first name, surname, company, street, street number, postcode, town, federal state, country, time zone, telephone number, fax number, e-mail address, birthday, customer number,and the profile information, such as your username and password that you may set to establish an online account with us, your account name, account number, SEMS system identification number, preferences and installation information. This information is optional and may be removed at any time. We also store your user account preferences and settings. We may ask for such information prior to you creating a username or account to help improve your experience exploring GoodWe Solar Community.
Content you submit	We collect the content you submit to the Services. This includes your posts and comments including saved drafts, links and videos you broadcast, your messages with other users (e.g., private messages, chats ), your reports and other communications with moderators, feedback or correspondence, such as information you provide when you contact us with questions, feedback, or otherwise correspond with us online, along with the metadata associated with the files you upload. When you submit content (including a post, comment, chat message) to a public part of the Community, any users of our Services will be able to see that content, the username associated with the content, and the date and time you originally submitted the content. Although some parts of the Services may be private or quarantined, they may become public (e.g., at the moderator’s option in the case of private communities) and you should consider that point before posting to the Services.Much of the information on the Services are public and accessible to everyone, with a GoodWe Solar Community account. By using the Community, you are directing us to share this information publicly and freely. In addition, you may release/publish the other details of your profile or your system and make them visible to other members. Within your profile, you have the option of adjusting the settings to modify the scope of publication of your data. It is at your discretion which data are released/published to other users and in what scope. Further details are provided on the websites beside the given function.
Actions you take	We also collect information about the actions you take when you use the Services. This includes your interactions with content, such as voting, answering, saving, hiding, and reporting. This also includes your interactions with other users, such as following, friending, and blocking. We also collect your preferences for receiving communications about our activities, events, and publications, and details about how you engage with our communications. We also may conduct user surveys, and research and analysis about your use of, or interest in, our products and surveys.community, such as your subscriptions.
Transactional information	Information provided to make a purchase such as information about your billing address, payments to and from you, customer number, and other details of products or services you have purchased from us.
Other information	You may choose to provide other information directly to us. For example, we may collect information when you fill out a form, participate in GoodWe Solar Community activities or promotions, apply for a job, request customer support, or otherwise communicate with us.

2. Information We Collect Automatically
When you access or use our Services, we may also automatically collect information about you. This includes:

Log and usage data

We may log information when you access and use the Services. This may include your IP address, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information (e.g., device IDs), device settings, mobile carrier name, pages visited, links clicked, the requested URL, and search terms.

Cookies and similar technologies

We may receive information from cookies, which are pieces of data your browser stores and sends back to us when making requests, and similar technologies. We use this information to deliver and maintain our services and our site, improve your experience, understand user activity, personalize content and advertisements, measure the effectiveness of advertising, and improve the quality of our Services. For example, we store and retrieve information about your preferred language and other settings.

Cookies are text files that are stored on the computer of the visitor to the website, allowing the visitor to be recognized on an anonymous basis. Cookies in general can be blocked or deleted by adjusting your browser settings.By using this website, you consent to the use of our websites being analyzed in the manner described above.

Location information

We may receive and process information about your location. We may receive location information from you when you choose to share such information on our Services, including by associating your content with a location, or we may derive an approximate location based on your IP address.

3. Information Collected from Other Sources

We may receive information about you from other sources, including from other users and third parties, and combine that information with the other information we have about you.

Information on SEMS portal

such as your energy production, energy consumption, battery settings and usage history, other load consumption or production, and other information relating to any of your energy resources. We also collect Installation information, such as roof type, house size, device configuration settings, appliance usage, inverter details, system configuration settings,and panel details, permit information, and photographs.

Linked services

If you authorize or link a third-party service (e.g., an unofficial mobile app client) to access your GoodWe Solar Community account, GoodWe receives information about your use of that service when it uses that authorization. Linking services may also cause the other service to send us information about your account with that service. For example, if you sign in to GoodWe Solar Community with a third-party identity provider, that provider may share an email address with us.

4. Information Collected by Third Parties

Embedded content

GoodWe Solar Community displays some linked content in-line on the services via "embeds.” For example, GoodWe posts that link to YouTube or Twitter may load the linked video or tweet within GoodWe Solar Community directly from those services to your device so you don't have to leave the community to see it. In general, GoodWe Solar Community does not control how third-party services collect data when they serve you their content directly via these embeds. As a result, embedded content is not covered by this privacy policy but by the policies of the service from which the content is embedded.

Information we obtain from social media platforms

We may maintain pages for GoodWe Solar Community on social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and other third party platforms. When you visit or interact with our pages on those platforms, the platform provider’s privacy policy will apply to your interactions and their collection, use and processing of your personal information. You or the platforms may provide us with information through the platform, and we will treat such information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Information from other third parties

We may receive personal information about you from third-party sources. For example, a business partner, such as a solar energy system installer, a grid services aggregator, or a utility, may share your contact and energy-related information with us if you have expressed interest in learning specifically about our products or services, or the types of products or services we offer. In certain circumstances, GoodWe Solar Community collects your personal information from your installer at your direction. These third-parties’ privacy policies govern their sharing of information with GoodWe and their other processing, so we advise you to contact the third-parties for further information.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We may use your personal information for the following purposes and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or at the time of collection:

1. To operate our services.

a) To provide, maintain and improve services.

b) To send you technical notices, updates, security alerts, invoices, and other support and administrative information.

c) To provide customer service, including establishing and maintaining your user profile on the Service.

d) To communicate with you about products, services, offers, promotions, and events as permitted by law, and to provide other news and information that we think will be of interest to you.

e) To monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activity related to our Services.

f) To understand your needs and interests, and personalize your experience with the Service and our communications.

To enable security features of the Service, such as by sending you security codes via email or text, and remembering devices from which you have previously logged into the Service;

To facilitate social features of the Service, such as providing chat or messaging functionality;

2. For research and development.

We analyze your use of the Service (including your personal information such as demographics) to improve the Service, to develop new products and services, and to market and promote our business.

3. To display advertisements.

We may work with advertising partners to display advertisements on the Service or elsewhere online. Our third-party advertising partners (e.g. Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook, and others) may automatically collect information about you when you use the Service through methods such as cookies and other tracking technologies (as further described below).

4. To comply with law.

We use your personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities.

5. For protection of rights, fraud prevention, and safety.

We may use your personal information and disclose it to law enforcement, government authorities, and private parties as we believe necessary or appropriate to: (a) protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property (including by making and defending legal claims); (b) enforce the terms and conditions that govern the Service; and (c) protect, investigate and deter against fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity.

How We Share Your Information

1. When We Share Specific Information

We may share your information with:

Service Providers and Contractors – We may share your personal information with service providers for the purpose of providing you the Services. Additionally, we may partner with other companies to process, analyze, and/or store data, including, but not limited to, analytical data. These companies may access your personal information for the purposes of providing services for us.

2. When We Share Information Generally

We share the information we collect generally:

a) For Marketing purposes pursuant to joint marketing arrangements. You may opt out of receiving our marketing communications at any time by contacting us at (community@goodwe.com) or by using the unsubscribe link in any of our communications. If you wish to opt out of receiving marketing communications from our joint marketing partners, you will need to opt out of those communications directly with those partners.

b) With certain third-party vendors that help us administer the Sites and/or Services, including by:

l Storing and hosting our content or your data;

l Performing analytics on our Sites and Services; and

l Providing operations and marketing assistance to us.

c) When you request us to share certain information with third parties, such as through your use of social media widgets or login integrations (such as SEMS Portal).

d) With marketing-related business partners to gather insights about your interactions with our products and Services so that we may better advertise to you and customize our products and services.

e) With corporate affiliates including any of our parent companies, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control with us.

f) With counterparties in the course of a corporate sale, merger, reorganization, sale of assets, dissolution, or similar event, some or all of the personal information may be part of the transferred assets.

g) To the extent permitted by law, when required by law, in connection with a court order, or other government or law enforcement authority or regulatory agency, or whenever we believe that disclosing such information is necessary or advisable, for example, to protect the rights, property, or safety of us or others.

3. Social Features

Certain features of the Services permit you to initiate interactions between the Services and third-party services or platforms, such as social networks (“Social Features”). Social Features include features that allow you to click and access our pages on certain third-party platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and from there to “like” or “share” our content on those platforms. Use of Social Features may entail a third party’s collection and/or use of information about you, which will be subject to the privacy policies of those platforms. If you use Social Features or similar third-party services, information you post or otherwise make accessible may be publicly displayed by the third-party service you are using. Both us and the third party may have access to information about you and your use of both the Services and the third-party service.

4. Comply with legal process or contractual necessity

We may disclose Personal Information in the good faith belief that we are required to do so by law, or that doing so is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process or contractual necessity, respond to any claims, or to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of GoodWe Solar Community, our customers, or the public. Information about our customers, including Personal Data, may be disclosed if it is necessary for legitimate purposes, for example as part of, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition. Other than in circumstances enumerated above, we have a policy of obtaining a person’s consent if we intend to process his/her Personal Data.

How We Secure Your Information

We maintain commercially reasonable administrative, physical and technical safeguards designed to prevent any unauthorized use, access, destruction, loss, alteration, or disclosure of your data.

While we take commercially reasonable steps to protect your data we cannot guarantee perfect security – no internet-based service can. No security system is impenetrable. Despite our security measures, we cannot guarantee the security of our databases, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to and from us over the Internet.

If we use data for a purpose requiring your consent under statutory regulations, we will request your express consent. Your consent will be documented in compliance with the relevant data privacy regulations. You may revoke the consent that you have given at any time with effect for the future and/or reject the future use of your data for advertising, market research, and opinion research. To revoke your consent or reject such future use, it is sufficient to send a simple message to GoodWe Solar Community. To ensure prompt processing, please use the contact details given below: Community@goodwe.com. You will not be charged any additional costs for contacting us.

Your Data Subject Rights

We do our best to give you reasonable control over the personal data we process about you, as described below. Depending on where you live, you are entitled to certain legal rights for your personal data.

The following are the types of requests you may make about your personal data, subject to applicable laws, rules, or regulations.

1. Access: You can request more information about the personal data we hold about you. You can also request a copy of the personal data.

2. Correction: If you believe that any personal data we hold about you is incorrect or incomplete, you can request that we correct or supplement that data. You can also correct some of the information by logging directly into your Service account. Please contact us as soon as you become aware of any such inaccuracies or incompleteness.

3. Objection: You can contact us to let us know that you object to the collection or use of your personal data for certain purposes.

4. Erasure: You can request that we delete some or all of your personal data from our systems.

5. Restriction of Processing: You can ask us to restrict further processing of your Data.

6. Withdrawal of Consent: If we process your personal data with your consent (as described at the time of collecting such data), you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.Under certain circumstances we will not be able to fulfill your request, for example, if the request interferes with our regulatory obligations, affects legal matters, includes the rights of GoodWe Solar Community users to the data contained in their accounts, we are unable to verify your identity, or involves disproportionate cost or effort. But in any case, we will respond to your request within a reasonable time frame and provide you with an explanation.

7. Do Not Track: Most modern web browsers give you the option to send a Do Not Track signal to the sites you visit, indicating that you do not wish to be tracked. However, there is no accepted standard for how a site should respond to this signal, and we do not take any action in response to this signal. Instead, in addition to publicly available third-party tools, we offer you the choices described in this policy to manage the collection and use of information about you.

8. Controlling the Use of Cookies: Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject first- and third-party cookies. Please note that if you choose to remove or reject cookies, this could affect the availability and functionality of our Services.

9. Controlling Promotional Communications: You may opt out of marketing-related emails by following the opt-out or unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the email, and by contacting us at our privacy office as indicated below, and, if you have an GoodWe Solar Community Account, by adjusting your preferences in the settings section for both mobile and web applications. If you receive marketing text messages from us, you may opt out of receiving further marketing text messages from us by replying STOP to our marketing message. Even if you opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us you may continue to receive service-related and other non-marketing communications.

Additional Information for EEA Users

Users in the European Economic Area have the right to request access to, rectification of, or erasure of their personal data; to data portability in certain circumstances; to request restriction of processing; to object to processing; and to withdraw consent for processing where they have previously provided consent. These rights can be exercised as described in the "Your Rights and Choices section above. EEA users also have the right to lodge a complaint with their local supervisory authority.

As required by applicable law, we collect and process information about individuals in the EEA only where we have a legal basis for doing so. Our legal bases depend on the Services you use and how you use them. We process your information on the following legal bases:

a) You have consented for us to do so for a specific purpose;

b) We need to process the information to provide you the Services, including to operate the Services, provide customer support and personalized features and to protect the safety and security of the Services;

c) It satisfies a legitimate interest (which is not overridden by your data protection interests), such as preventing fraud, ensuring network and information security, enforcing our rules and policies, protecting our legal rights and interests, research and development, personalizing the Services, and marketing and promoting the Services;

d) We need to process your information to comply with our legal obligations.

Additional Information for California Users

The California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA”), as amended, requires us to provide California residents with some additional information, which we address in this section.

In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

a) Identifiers, like your GoodWe username, email address, IP address, and cookie information.

b) Commercial information, including information about transactions you undertake with us.

c) Internet or other electronic network activity information, such as information about your activity on our Services and limited information about your activity on the services of advertisers who use our advertising technology.

d) Geolocation information based on your IP address, or more specific location information if you authorize your device to provide it to us.

e) Your messages with other users (e.g., private messages, chats, and modmail).

f) Audiovisual information in pictures, audio, or video content submitted to GoodWe.

g) Professional or employment-related information or demographic information, but only if you explicitly provide it to us, such as by applying for a job or filling out a survey.

h) Inferences we make based on other collected data, for purposes such as recommending content, advertising, and analytics.

You can find more information about (a) what we collect and sources of that information in the "Information We Collect” section of this notice, (b) the business and commercial purposes for collecting that information in the "How We Use Your Information” section, and (c) the categories of third parties with whom we share that information in the "How We Share Information” section.

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, including the right to opt out of any sales or sharing of your personal information, to request access to and information about our data practices, and to request deletion or correction of your personal information, as well as the right not to be discriminated against for exercising your privacy rights. GoodWe Solar Community does not "sell” or "share” personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information except to provide you the Services or as otherwise permitted by the CCPA.

You may exercise your rights to access, delete, or correct your personal information as described in the "Your Rights and Choices” section of this notice. When you make a request, we will verify your identity by asking you to sign into your account or if necessary by requesting additional information from you. You may also make a rights request using an authorized agent. If you submit a rights request from an authorized agent who does not provide a valid power of attorney, we may ask the authorized agent to provide proof that you gave the agent signed permission to submit the request to exercise rights on your behalf. In the absence of a valid power of attorney, we may also require you to verify your own identity directly with us or confirm to us that you otherwise provided the authorized agent permission to submit the request. If you have any questions or concerns, you may reach us using the methods described under Your Rights and Choices or by emailing us at community@goodwe.com.

International Data Transfers

We are based in China and we process and store information on servers located in China. Depending on various factors, including the location of our users and service providers, we may store information on servers and devices in other countries. For example, your personal data collected by GoodWe may be processed or accessed in the country where you use our products and services, or in other countries where GoodWe or its affiliates, subsidiaries, service providers, or business partners are located. By accessing or using the Services or otherwise providing information to China, you consent to the processing, transmission, and storage of information in China and other countries, These jurisdictions may have different data protection laws. In such cases, GoodWe will take measures to ensure that data is processed in accordance with this policy and applicable law, which includes when transferring personal data of data subjects from the EU to countries or regions that have been recognized by the European Commission as having an adequate level of data protection.

Changes to this Statement

This policy may be updated from time to time for reasons such as operational practices or regulatory changes but will alert you that changes have been made by indicating at the bottom of the data protection statement the date it was last updated. We encourage you to review our data protection statement to make sure you understand how your information will be used.

Children

Our websites, products, and services are primarily intended for adults. Our users must be over the age required by law in your country to create an account or otherwise use the Services, or we require verifiable consent from your parent or legal guardian. If a child's personal data is collected with prior parental consent, we will only use or disclose such data as permitted by law, with the express consent of the child's parent or guardian. In addition, If we accidentally collect personal data from a child without the prior verified consent of the child's parents, we will attempt to delete such data as soon as possible.

Contact Us

If you have any privacy-related questions or comments related to this privacy policy, please send an email to community@goodwe.com. You can also contact us by writing to this address:

No. 90 Zijin Rd., New District, Suzhou, 215011, China

+86(0)512 6958 2201