Energyear Italy | Interview with Marco Garcia from Nextracker

Thank you, Catalina. It's a pleasure for me to be here and join you. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. So I'm a Chief Commercial Officer and co-founder with Nextracker. We founded the company in 2013, so 10 years ago, and we are now up to 85 GW of trackers shipped around the world. We're the number one solar tracker supplier globally. We've maintained 30% global tracker market share eight years in a row since 2015. So we've continued to grow in the key tracker markets around the world, and our focus continues to be growth, especially in the emerging markets in Europe. So Europe is one of the greatest potentials for trackers, and we're very focused on the European market.

Certainly. So we've continued to grow our presence in the key tracker markets around the world. Some of the reasons that Nextracker continues to grow are the relationships that we're building with the long-term asset owners, specifically around continued energy production, optimized energy production. We have a TrueCapture software that eliminates shading during backtracking hours during the morning and the afternoon and improves performance during diffuse sky days when there's clouds or rain. For the long-term asset owner who's going to own the asset for 25 to 30 years, this is very important to get additional energy throughout the life of the asset. So we build partnerships with the asset owners, of course we build partnerships with EPC contractors as well. It's recognized in the market that Nextracker is the fastest installing tracker, so the least amount of man-hours required by EPC contractors to install trackers, especially the utility scale hundreds of megawatt scale trackers. Nextracker is the fastest to install. EPCs like that. Another reason we're growing is the XTR product that we launched several years ago, so the extreme terrain following product. These are trackers that follow the terrain north-south, so on undulating terrains we minimize the earthworks and grading required before you can start installing the tracker, because our tracker rows follow the terrain north to south. So we're innovating to allow solar trackers to follow the terrain and to be built on hills, if you will. More and more projects in Europe are no longer on flat rectangular sites; they're more in challenging sites with some terrain, with some undulations. And the XTR extreme terrain following is able to satisfy those project requirements.

Excellent. So yes, I love to talk about Italy. If you don't mind, I'll mention prior to discussing Italy our growth in Europe in general. We started out in the traditional tracker markets: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece. And we're seeing growth now in Eastern Europe, so we now have projects in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary. We're in Scandinavia now, we're in Denmark and Sweden, and we have projects in the UK. So it's very exciting in the European tracker marketplace to see trackers being developed and deployed even in the northern climates, where trackers now make sense because of the bifacial gain that you get from the backside of the module. If there's snow on the ground several months of the year, as you find in northern Europe, then you get the albedo, you get the reflection off the snow to improve the tracker gain from the backside. Specific to Italy, we're very excited about the growth of the Italian market. We now have over 250 megawatts of utility scale projects in Italy. One of our most exciting projects is with Sesto Generation. This is a project in Pontinia called Pontina in the Lazio region. And this is exciting because it's an agrivoltaic project. So with the Nextracker 1P tracker, so one module in portrait across the tracker, Sesto Generation was able to develop agrivoltaics, growing crops between the tracker rows. And they're actually working with a farming co-op in the region. And I want to make sure I get this right: it's called Fattoria Solidale. So Fattoria Solidale is a farming co-op that provides jobs and growth opportunities for disadvantaged people. So it's a great story. They use about 65% of the array. It's a 70 megawatt solar tracker array. About 65% or 135 hectares is used for farming between the rows, and they're working with a local co-op to provide jobs for disadvantaged people. So really nice story: you combine clean energy production from the tracker system and you provide jobs for the community, and then it's dual use, the agriculture growing crops in between the rows of the trackers. This is now becoming more important in Italy and other markets in Europe where agrivoltaics is becoming a requirement. So we're delighted for that success story again with Sesto Generation on the Pontina project. In general, the Italian tracker market continues to grow. The Italian market deployed 3.5 GW of solar in general through the first nine months of 2023. That's significant growth. And on the utility scale side, the challenge of getting tracker projects permitted is really what's keeping the growth from scaling even higher. So the authorization process in Italy is challenging. Any Italian developer knows this. Many permits that you have to achieve from not only getting your land, local communities, the environmental permitting, the grid interconnection. There's a set of a significant list of documents you must obtain in order to get that. So it continues to be a challenge, but we support development activities and we are certainly prepared to continue to grow in the Italian market. We are now in 11 countries in Europe, and Europe is a focus market for Nextracker in general because of the potential in all the different markets.

As mentioned, the permitting is certainly the greatest challenge in the Italian market. I think it's understood by developers in Italy that the timeline to achieve all the permits they require in order to begin construction on a tracker project tends to be longer than in other countries. However, the opportunity is great because of the need for solar energy in Italy. There's a sense of the requirement to continue to deploy renewable energy in Italy given the high cost of electricity today for all Italian consumers. It's important that the energy generation portfolio have more renewables and have more energy independence, so energy produced on site right here in Italy. Other challenges in Italy in general: the shape of the country, the shape of the land, significant undulations. So the projects are rarely north-south rectangles. Typically you have projects running northwest-southeast, there are undulations in the land. I mentioned earlier we have the XTR product, the extreme terrain following product that follows the land north-south and minimizes grading and land movement, so it allows EPC contractors to get to the construction part of the project sooner by avoiding so much land movement and grading. So the land constraints, the shape of the land, and the ability to find plots large enough to do hundreds of megawatts at a time, these are challenges in Italy. And Nextracker helps solve those challenges by providing the XTR product that will not only follow the terrain but also makes it faster to deploy and construct.

We really like the Energy Italy Congress. It's the key Congress that we participate in in Italy each year. I like the setting there, it's more intimate. We're able to spend quality time with our partners: developers, owners, PV module suppliers, inverter suppliers, EPC partners. It's still a relatively small community in Italy, the solar community in Italy. I'd like to think that we're all on the same team. We're all solar warriors in the solar ecosystem working together to advance solar. And so it's a great coming together of the solar industry in Italy, and we're excited to participate in the next Energy Italy. I like these solar warrior people in the Congress.