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SolarCity will say more next month about massive Riverbend project
by chocieniAnalysts expect SolarCity to elaborate on its acquisition of Silevo at its second quarter earnings call, which will take place around Aug. 7.
The acquisition was
announced June 16, and has huge implications for Western New York -- even
though both companies are from California.
That's because SolarCity
plans to use Silevo's technology to build one of the largest solar-panel
production plants in the world at Riverbend Commerce Park in Buffalo. The
proposed park is being created through Gov. Andrew Cuomo's
Buffalo Billion initiative, and will be supported by more than $200 million of
public infrastructure.
If the plant comes to
fruition, it will almost certainly make Buffalo a prominent region in the
high-stakes, years-long battle to make solar energy competitive with fossil
fuel.
SolarCity's chairman, Elon Musk,
has said Silevo's high-output, low-cost technology shows the potential to make
solar competitive without the huge government subsidies on which it currently
survives. Despite a glut of panels today, Musk, CEO London Rive and CTO Peter Rive said in a June 16 blog post on SolarCity's
website that the manufacturing plant will address the projected future market.
"Without decisive action to
lay the groundwork today, the massive volume of affordable, high-efficiency
panels needed for unsubsidized solar power to outcompete fossil-fuel grid power
simply will not be there when it is needed," they wrote.
Since June, there hasn't
been much news from the players involved. Cuomo has said he's had positive
talks with Musk, but warned that the project is extremely competitive and that
other states are in pursuit. SolarCity is an intensely scrutinized company,
which is a function of its highly subsidized industry and also of solar power's
world-changing potential -- if it ever makes economic sense. Its last earnings
call was May 7 -- before the Silevo acquisition set off a continuing round of
speculation about how it would be financed and the impacts in Buffalo, the
United States and the international solar industry.