“We were early, and I’m glad we did that then, because we learned a lot,” Shugar says of the five projects NEXTracker did back then.
Speaking from the Intersolar/ees Europe in Germany this week, the CEO tells ESN Premium that between now and the recent decision to acquire US-headquartered battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator Prevalon, a lot has changed.
The acquisition, expected to close in Q3 of 2026, will extend Nextpower’s technology platform across BESS and intelligent controls for critical power infrastructure, with particular emphasis on the rapidly growing data centre market.
“We saw lithium really become mature, achieve the safety status, achieve the cost progress that we needed to see in order for us to really embrace, put our brand behind it, and scale it. When we were initially in, it was too early for flow, and the lithium stuff was too immature for us to really scale it globally,” he says.
“Now that technology has achieved tremendous progress in cost, performance, and safety, we’re all in to really embrace it and bring those solutions forward for customers.”
