The Californian company Sungevity recently signed a deal with the Neatherlands utility company E.ON Benelux to create a partnership offering services in solar energy.
Photo Credit: Earth4Energy
The arrangement calls on Sungevity to use their marketing and solar design platforms to serve utility customers, and the services will be promoted in a co-branded way.
The partnership follows investments made in April by E.ON in Sungevity. The investments enabled Sungevity to combine that capitalization money with other investors such as GE Venture to expand their holdings in Zonline, a Dutch solar company, and enabled them to obtain complete ownership. The resulting organization will be known as Sungevity Netherlands.
The Netherlands solar market has now reached grid parity with more traditional power sources. This parity has been achieved gradually over several decades in which retail electricity rates have steadily risen while solar costs have fallen. “Obviously, the lines have to cross,” said Sungevity CEO Andrew Birch. According to Birch, there are at least eight other European markets where solar parity has also been achieved.
Analysts credit the success of solar power in the Netherlands to the fact that the European energy market is further evolved in utilizing solar power than countries such as the United States. Sungevity is currently negotiating with U.S. utilities to establish partnerships, however the demand for solar power in the U.S. is not as great as in Europe at present.
