The future of U.S. renewable energy rests on Nextpower—the backbone of the growing solar sector

Resumen detallado

Nextpower recently changed its name and has made 13 acquisitions in five years to lead the grow of solar power in the U.S. and abroad.

Nextpower operates as the spine of the U.S. solar sector—and increasingly worldwide—by literally lifting the solar panels toward the sun. But maybe cofounder and CEO Dan Shugar would think of his company as the stem of the industry instead.

Nextpower specializes in solar trackers, the arrays and devices that operate in slow motion to keep solar panels oriented toward the sun, maximizing the solar panels’ energy production each day.

“The trackers do what sunflowers have been doing for millions of years,” Shugar told Fortune. “They basically follow the sun during the day, and they can produce almost 30% more energy. It depends on the location and the project design.”

While Nextpower controls 55% of the U.S. solar tracker market—and about 30% globally—the company has gone on a buying spree of late to enter the battery business and expand its solar portfolio to cover essentially everything except the actual solar cells.

The company is 13 years old but just changed its name last year from Nextracker to reflect its increasingly diversified business model.

“We moved from a pure-play tracker company, and we developed a platform strategy to do everything in solar except make the solar cells,” Shugar said. “And we’re doing everything in batteries except make the battery cells.”

Nextpower’s stock is up 12% this year to a market cap of $15 billion. Nextpower also was ranked 24th this year in Fortune’s Fastest-Growing Companies list.

This month, Jefferies energy analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith declared Nextpower as the firm’s “franchise pick” in the power and utilities sector because it represents a “bet on the highest quality in a totally disregarded sector.”

The clean-energy sector bottomed out during the first two years of the new Trump administration and should begin to rebound after the blue wave of Democrats taking over in January following the midterm elections.

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