03/27/2012 05:43 PM ShareThis
SolarCity Gets Into Energy Efficiency Business
SustainableBusiness.com News
SolarCity, which plans to go public later this year, announced that it's
applying the same solar finance model to home energy retrofits, by
offering a national Home Energy Loan.
A typical U.S. family spends about $1,900 a year on home utility bills,
but $40 of every $100 spent on heating and cooling is wasted because of duct
and air leakage alone, says SolarCity.
SolarCity employs the increasingly popular solar leasing model, where
homeowners and businesses can get solar on their roof without upfront
installation costs. They merely pay for electricity, which is set at long
term rates, protecting them from rising utility prices.
Similarly, SolarCity's energy efficiency financing option eliminates the
upfront cost of energy efficiency upgrades. The company performs an energy
audit to diagnose the cause of high utility bills and energy loss, and then
implements the upgrades needed.
Since 2010, when the company introduced energy efficiency services, it's
completed over 5,000 projects in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and
Texas. It's now expanding to the east coast.
The company says it uses proprietary software which performs billions of
calculations during each evaluation to produce a simple, comprehensive
report that provides an overview of the opportunities to improve efficiency
across nine categories: air infiltration, insulation, heating and cooling
and duct leakage.
Through its partnership with Boston-based Admirals Bank, which has a history
as a home improvement lending leader, SolarCity customers
can finance upgrades with 1-year, 3-year or 10-year options.
SolarCity raised another $81 million last month and is now the second
biggest commercial solar installer in the US, after SunPower.
In November, 2011, SolarCity announced a deal with Bank of America Merrill
Lynch to finance the debt portion of its $1 billion SolarStrong project to
install solar PV on military housing across the US.
The project will double the number of residential solar systems in the US.
Over the next five years, SolarCity will install 371 MW of solar on as many
as 120,000 military housing complexes in 33 states - the largest residential
solar PV project in the US.
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