‘It’s always about LCOE’ – GameChange Solar CEO on Terrasmart and sector consolidation

For GameChange, the move could be seen as part of an ongoing evolution, from a firm focused on fixed-tilt racking in 2010, to incorporating trackers and transformers as the playing field evolves. 

Terrasmart acquisition

Philip Vyhanek, CEO of GameChange Energy, told PV Tech Premium that Terrasmart was “the perfect fit” for the company’s plans.

GameChange established a transformer business – GameChange BOS – in 2024, and as that offering matured, Vyhanek said: “The opportunity really came up with eBOS. That was probably a six-to 12-month process looking at eBOS players, and then when the Terrasmart opportunity came up, we thought it was a perfect fit.”

He said the company’s product line, recognised brand name and manufacturing facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan, were attractive prospects. Vyhanek added that GameChange has “very significant plans to expand the offerings in the Terrasmart portfolio of products,” but could not confirm any specific expansion plans.

Beyond the company’s specific attributes, he said that acquiring Terrasmart was part of improving GameChange’s offering on the basis of cost; “When we think about the evolution of solar and how it’s moving forward…it’s always about the LCOE (levelised cost of electricity).

“GameChange has always been involved in the design and the engineering of solar sites,” he continues, “Doing wire management, doing cable harnesses, doing either trunk busses or compiler runs, all the way back to the inverter stations. It’s very natural for us. We’ve already done a tonne of the layout work. We already know where all the foundations are. We’re delivering and designing all of the trackers.”

Given this, he said that Terrasmart’s business of wire management and electrical equipment is “a natural progression, where we can deliver to the EPC and the owner a turnkey solution that is cost-effective and, probably as importantly, extremely efficient to install.”

He said that GameChange is looking to establish a “world-class delivery system” for pre-engineered solar project construction, incorporating its foundation, racking and tracker offerings alongside the new products. The company wants to offer EPCs a streamlined production process, “making sure that you’re getting every part when you need it, block by buildable block,” and incorporating all parts of the system.

“As I said, we’re leveraging the fact that we’re already doing the layout of basically the entire solar plant,” Vyhanek explains.

BOS sector consolidation

Big players in the solar tracker space have been expanding their offerings to other solar components in recent months. NextPower (formerly Nextracker) has bought up robotics firms, piling and foundation operations, among others, and competitors Array Technologies and FTC Solar have also expanded their offerings.

“There are three main aspects to LCOE,” he says. Capital cost, O&M cost and optimising energy output. He explains that process from the perspective of a tracker producer:

“Your first focus is ‘how do we make a high-quality product cost-effectively?’ Then you start thinking about how to improve the installation cost – how do we make it easier and faster to install? Both of these are a constant evolution, by the way,” he explains.

“But then there was a big transition in the technology of optimising energy harvest,” he continues, including focus on extreme weather, row-to-row shading, hail and other evolving factors. By continuing to focus on lowering the LCOE of solar plants, Vyhanek says that tracker firms logically turned to other parts of the array: “We did all that on the tracker, we can do the same or similar things on the BOS, right? We can make sure the BOS is optimised for our tracker, it’s optimised for the site, it installs as quickly as possible…it really is a natural progression.”

Will the consolidation in the BOS sector continue? Vyhanek says yes: “There are clearly opportunities for that to continue to happen. I think there’s a limit, though – everybody wants some level of diversification and some level of security.”

For example, he said he is “not quite clear” on whether firms like GameChange will expand into the power electronics and inverter sector. “In that case, there’s a significant amount of technology and development that I think is unique, so I’m not as convinced that’s super logical.”

Often, when larger firms buy up smaller, specialist operations, the acquired firm can suffer from a loss of both identity and quality. Vyhanek says GameChange tries to avoid this by asking “Why are we in this business?”

He continues: “Our mission statement is to repower the planet, and that’s something that unifies us across all these different business segments. We’re not sitting down and trying to make cell phones,” he says, insisting that the unifying end market – solar and energy storage – for all of the company’s operations imposes a unity and coherence.

‘Regardless of the politics, the fundamentals have not changed’

Turning to matters American, Vyhanek hit the pragmatic and optimistic beats that have become fairly common in the solar industry since the policy changes under the Trump administration thrust fresh uncertainty into the sector.

“There’s always the short-term challenges, and then there’s the long-term reality,” he says, “This year has definitely been a curve ball…[but] for all of the rhetoric you hear in the news, none of it has changed the fundamentals. Solar has come down in cost dramatically over the last decade, it continues to be one of the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways to generate power, and combined with energy storage it’s difficult to say it’s not one of the primary ways we solve our energy needs going forwards. This is a good space to be in.”

With the expected rush of development and construction activity over the next two years as US companies look to secure crucial tax credits, firms like GameChange Solar could be well-placed to capitalise.

 “I think in all industries, as they become more and more mature, what you find is the best of the companies, the healthiest of those companies, the most customer focused, the most cost effective, the highest quality ones are the ones that continue to survive,” says Vyhanek. In a market under pressure and flux, this could prove more true than ever.  

After five editions of Large Scale Solar USA, the event becomes SolarPLUS USA to mirror where the market is heading. The 2026 edition, held in Dallas, Texas, on 24-25 March, will bring together developers, investors and utilities to discuss managing hybrid assets, multi-state pipelines, power demand increase from data centres and AI as well as the co-location of solar PV with energy storage in a complex grid. For more details and how to attend the event, visit the website here.