“Highly valuable” solar driving investors to snap up utility businesses – WoodMac

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Reddit
Email
The Duette solar facility in Florida, which Duke Energy expanded in 2021. Credit: Duke Energy

High inflation rates and high valuations of solar projects, thanks in part to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), have been behind the recent decisions by US utilities to sell their commercial solar businesses, according to Sylvia Levya Martinez, principal analyst of North American utility-scale solar at Wood Mackenzie.

Over the last six months, two major US utilities – American Electric Power (AEP) and Duke Energy – have been selling off their commercial solar PV assets to private investment groups and consolidating their operations in regulated markets.

This article requires Premium SubscriptionBasic (FREE) Subscription

Unlock unlimited access for 12 whole months of distinctive global analysis

Photovoltaics International is now included.

  • Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
  • In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
  • Unlimited digital access to the PV Tech Power journal catalogue
  • Unlimited digital access to the Photovoltaics International journal catalogue
  • Access to more than 1,000 technical papers
  • Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual

Or continue reading this article for free

Commercial assets are those in unregulated markets, unlike regulated markets where utilities often have monopolies and rates are not subject to competition.

Duke sold its commercial utility-scale renewables wing to Canadian asset owner Brookfield Renewables for US$2.8 billion last year and sold its commercial distributed renewables generation arm to investment firm Arclight Capital.

AEP, for its part, sold its entire New Mexico commercial solar PV portfolio earlier this month for US$230 million to another private investment firm, Exus Asset Holdings

Renewable energy assets are currently very high-value properties for investors due to the federal incentives put behind the energy transition by the IRA, and solar is projected to dominate among the major renewable energy technologies in the US over the coming decades.

Martinez told PV Tech Premium that for utilities, “a combination of highly valuable assets that are highly demanded in the market and very ambitious plans with high levels of capital expenditure” has driven the decisions to divest commercial solar assets in favour of regulated market operations.

High inflation rates have played their part, as the new regulated projects – predominantly transmission – that AEP and Duke are looking to build require very high capital expenditures. Self-financing from the cash generated by selling solar assets is preferable to relying on debt financing in an environment of high inflation and prices.

The full version of this story can be read on PV Tech Premium.

7 October 2025
San Francisco Bay Area, USA
PV Tech has been running an annual PV CellTech Conference since 2016. PV CellTech USA, on 7-8 October 2025 is our third PV CellTech conference dedicated to the U.S. manufacturing sector. The events in 2023 and 2024 were a sell out success and 2025 will once again gather the key stakeholders from PV manufacturing, equipment/materials, policy-making and strategy, capital equipment investment and all interested downstream channels and third-party entities. The goal is simple: to map out PV manufacturing in the U.S. out to 2030 and beyond.
21 October 2025
New York, USA
Returning for its 12th edition, Solar and Storage Finance USA Summit remains the annual event where decision-makers at the forefront of solar and storage projects across the United States and capital converge. Featuring the most active solar and storage transactors, join us for a packed two-days of deal-making, learning and networking.
25 November 2025
Warsaw, Poland
Large Scale Solar Central and Eastern Europe continues to be the place to leverage a network that has been made over more than 10 years, to build critical partnerships to develop solar projects throughout the region.
16 June 2026
Napa, USA
PV Tech has been running PV ModuleTech Conferences since 2017. PV ModuleTech USA, on 16-17 June 2026, will be our fifth PV ModulelTech conference dedicated to the U.S. utility scale solar sector. The event will gather the key stakeholders from solar developers, solar asset owners and investors, PV manufacturing, policy-making and and all interested downstream channels and third-party entities. The goal is simple: to map out the PV module supply channels to the U.S. out to 2027 and beyond.

Read Next

June 30, 2025
Heliene has completed the sale of Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credits in association with Minnesota-based U.S. Bank.
June 30, 2025
Voting on the US tax reconciliation bill is expected to begin in the Senate today, following a draft published on Friday that hit clean energy tax credits hard.
June 30, 2025
US clean energy developer Clearway Energy Group has received corporate credit facilities over US$1 billion.
June 30, 2025
Australian module manufacturer Tindo Solar has secured a 30MW solar module supply agreement to power Australia's first "net zero pipeline”.
June 27, 2025
Renewables investment platform Nexwell Power has signed a round of power purchase agreements (PPAs) with “one of the largest” US tech companies for solar PV capacity to be built in Spain.
June 27, 2025
Statkraft has signed PPAs with Better Energy to purchase energy from two solar power plants in Poland with a total capacity of 64GWh.

Subscribe to Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Upcoming Webinars
June 30, 2025
10am PST / 6pm BST
Solar Media Events
July 1, 2025
London, UK
Solar Media Events
July 1, 2025
London, UK
Media Partners, Solar Media Events
July 2, 2025
Bangkok, Thailand
Media Partners, Solar Media Events
September 2, 2025
Mexico City, Mexico