Lynn Jurich

Will rooftop solar go mainstream?

August 11, 2010

It’s been a remarkable summer for SunRun, the San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to get solar power onto millions of residential rooftops. SunRun raised $100 million in project financing from utility PG&E. Venture capitalists invested another $55 million in the company. Home Depot agreed to distribute its rooftop solar panels, and Toll Brothers, the big home builder, is using SunRun’s solar leasing program to install PV panels on new homes in a luxury golf-course community in Yorba Linda, CA.

Today, SunRun enters Pennsylvania, its sixth state. You wouldn’t think of Pennsylvania as a solar-friendly state but, as it happens, the Keystone State has all the right ingredients–high and rising electricity prices, generous state subsidies for renewable energy, and a regulatory framework that permits homeowners to sell surplus power back to the electricity grid.

Says Lynn Jurich, the president and co-founder of SunRun: “We want to go to markets where we can save customers money, and where we can make money.”

I’ve written about SunRun before (See SunRun: A New Deal for Solar and Solar’s Strange Bedfellows) but the company is growing so fast, albeit off a small base, that it makes a lot of news. The PG&E, Home Depot and Toll Brothers agreements, along with its geographic expansion, all seem to  further validate the company’s business model. [click to continue…]

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SunRun: A new deal for solar

September 15, 2009

Until recently, you had to be deep green—and have deep pockets—to put solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of your home. The costs were high–$20,000 to $50,000 or more. The technology was baffling. The return on that big upfront investment was uncertain.

A California company called SunRun is changing that. A well-funded renewable energy startup – yes, even in these tough times, this small company has raised capital — SunRun offers homeowners a simpler, cheaper and less risky way to go solar.

Photo credit: Gray Watson, Creative Commons

Photo credit: Gray Watson, Creative Commons

It’s doing so by adopting a business model that has been proven in the corporate arena. When you see solar panels on the roof of a Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Safeway or Kohl’s, chances are that they don’t belong to the retailer. Instead, those companies have signed what’s called a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with a solar provider. The provider (Sun Edison, near me in Maryland, is a big one) buys and installs the panels, owns and maintains them and sells the electricity at a fixed long-term rate to the customer. The retailers, in other works, benefit from solar power without paying a lot upfront or worrying about maintenance. [click to continue…]

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