GreenTech Solar
Adam James – August 5, 2015
This morning, SolarCity announced a $10 million acquisition (and up to $20 million with earn-outs) of ILIOSS, a top 20 EPC firm in Mexico according to the Q2 Latin America PV Playbook. This marks a significant milestone for SolarCity, which joins Sungevity and SunEdison in the international market, but also represents a potentially market-moving event in the Mexican solar sector.
We explained last year why this move makes sense for SolarCity. The company plans to maintain an aggressive growth strategy in the context of a potential ITC step-down in the United States, while Mexico boasts strong fundamentals and is one of the most accessible growth markets in the world. Acquiring ILIOSS enables SolarCity to leverage local expertise and pipeline in a complex market rather than starting from scratch, and the company (rightly) noted that Mexico was a good “jumping-off point” for further expansion into Latin America.
Mexico’s annual PV market will reach 2.6 gigawatts in 2020 under GTM Research’s base-case forecast, for a cumulative market of 7.6 gigawatts. Mexico is also the No. 1 ranked country for distributed generation in the Latin America region, and at 2.2 gigawatts, the commercial and industrial segment is expected to account for 15 percent of the Mexican market out to 2020. For full article.