“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

July 15, 2025
Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has announced plans to run four new Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) tenders by the end of 2025.
Premium
July 15, 2025
Virtual power plants are emerging as a potentially critical means of meeting the growing power demands from data centres in the US.
July 15, 2025
D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) has started construction at a 150MW solar-plus-storage project in the US state of New Mexico.
July 15, 2025
The US Department of Commerce (DoC) has initiated an investigation into the imports of polysilicon and its derivatives.
July 15, 2025
Malaysian utility company Tenaga Nasional Berhad has officially launched a floating solar pilot project, which could help unlock 2.2GW of generation capacity.
July 15, 2025
Ingeteam has expanded its footprint in Australia by announcing it will supply the 243MWp Maryvale Solar and Energy Storage Project in New South Wales.

Subscribe to Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Media Partners, Solar Media Events
September 2, 2025
Mexico City, Mexico
Solar Media Events
September 16, 2025
Athens, Greece
Solar Media Events
September 22, 2025
Bilbao, Spain
Solar Media Events
September 30, 2025
Seattle, USA
Solar Media Events
October 1, 2025
London, UK