Energy retailer Direct Energy has acquired Astrum Energy for US$54 million, which it says will expand the range of products that it can offer to its customers. According to GTM Research, Astrum Solar is the eighth-largest residential solar installation company in the United States, with around 10 MW installed in 2013 and $40 million in 2013 revenues.
Astrum Solar has been active mostly in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States, and is the third-largest installer in Massachusetts. The company recently expanded to California, and has partnered with Sunova and Clean Power Finance to provide external financing.
GTM Research Solar Analyst Nicole Litvak says this is part of larger trends of acquisitions and consolidation within the U.S. residential space. We expected Astrum to be acquired, and expect other companies to be acquired as well, says Litvak. The other top installers, we think they will continue to go down one of these paths either raising their own funds or being acquired.
Citing home security and automation provider Vivint's move into the residential solar space, Litvak says that such moves make sense for companies like Direct Energy who provide services to homeowners.
They have a large existing base of customers who are the right people to target for solar, a lot of them are homeowners, and it is a natural extension of that business, explains Litvak. It's a lot easier for them to go back to their old customers than for solar companies to find new customers, so they work well together.
Litvak also says that she expects this trend to support the overall growth of the U.S. residential PV market. These top ten installers are already the fastest growing companies compared to the rest of the market, and partnerships and acquisitions like these will only help them more.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.