Elon Musk’s SolarCity has acquired Silevo

SolarCity, the dominant US installer of residential solar panels whose largest shareholder is entrepreneur Elon Musk, announced Tuesday that it plans to acquire solar panel maker Silevo and expand into manufacturing with new panel factories. The San Mateo-based company, which leases rooftop systems with little to zero upfront costs, said the acquisition enables it to produce efficient, low-cost panels in volumes large enough to ensure its supply. It’s in talks with the state of New York to build, within two years there, one of the world’s largest solar panel factories with an annual capacity of at least one gigawatt. “If we don’t do this, we thought there was a risk of not being able to have the solar panels we need to expand our business in the long-term,” chairman Elon Musk, also CEO of Tesla Motors, said Tuesday in a conference call. He said while many basic panels are being made, more advanced ones are needed for the solar industry to lower its costs and compete with other energy sources without government subsidies.