Elon Musk (photo ©Dan Taylor / Heisenberg Media) is a really indefatigable entrepreneur. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors he’s also chairman of SolarCity, an American company that designs and installs solar energy systems. Well, this week Silevo bought SolarCity, a manufacturer of high-efficiency solar panels, for $350 million. The idea behind this acquisition is to push further progress in the field of solar panels.

SolarCity was founded in 2006 by brothers Peter and Lyndon Rive in collaboration with Elon Musk, who is their cousin. Lyndon Rive is the company CEO, Peter Rive is its chief operating officer and Elon Musk is its president. The company has grown considerably over the years and with the acquisition of Silevo wants to take another step forward.

Silevo has its solar panel factory in China but even before the acquisition by SolarCity was in talks with the state of New York for the construction of a new factory in Buffalo. The business plan is to build panels capable of generating a combined output of 1 GW each year.

The cost of solar panels has dropped tremendously over the years but not all manufacturers provide particularly efficient panels. Silevo provides high-efficiency products and this is the main reason that led SolarCity to buy it. By managing both the production and the installation of the panels, SolarCity will offer a quality service at good prices, a long-term policy to promote solar energy.

Elon Musk and his cousins ​​plan to increase significantly their business in the coming years. In this area, progress is continuing so we can expect more price declines and increasing efficiency of the panels. The idea for ​​SolarCity is to build new factories when demand increases because this is the trend.

There are still a lot of room for improvement for photovoltaic solar panels but today they’re already a serious alternative to other sources of electricity production. Elon Musk is always looking to the future so he wants to be part of the decisive action to make solar power cheaper than power produced by fossil fuels and not only in ecological terms.

[ad name=”AmazonElectronics468″]