Opel Solar is moving into the South American market with partner IG Solar of Madrid, Spain.

“There is a market there,” Opel CFO Mike McCoy said of South America. “The interest is growing.”

Opel joins a short but growing list of solar companies beginning to court South America, which appears to be an emerging market in the industry.

“Three years ago there were a few 500-kilowatt and 1-megawatt projects,” said Opel spokeswoman Patricia Agudow. “Now, all of a sudden, they’re going into the double digit-megawatt requests.”

Opel has partnered with Madrid’s IG Solar because the company already has contacts in the South American market and can be Opel’s sales force on the ground, McCoy said.

“IG is well-engrained there, and they’re very skilled,” he said. “We can’t have a sales force of our own everywhere.”

Opel specializes in utility-scale high concentrating photovoltaic and solar tracking projects of 10, 20 and 30 megawatts.

“We’ve given a few quotes so far,” McCoy said. “Now we just need to see if we can bring those quotes to fruition.”

Opel is concentrating most of its South American efforts on Argentina, Chile and Peru. Those countries have high solar radiance, a lot of open space and an evolving awareness of solar and what it could do for power generation in an area of the world with growing middles classes and increasing power needs. Public policy in those countries is also slowly forming to make a friendly environment for solar companies.

The interest has been strong, and Opel expects to be doing business there soon.

“It is really a building market for them,” McCoy said.

McCoy said he’s also optimistic about moving into the African solar market where he has also given a few quotes that could turn into new business for the growing solar company that mostly works in California and some in Europe right now.

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