| Key people |
Lyndon Rive — CEO; Elon Musk — Chairman; |
|---|---|
| Employees | 950 (2011) |
| Website | SolarCity.com |
SolarCity is an American provider of solar energy system design, financing, installation and related services and also builds charging stations for electric vehicles.
It is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with additional locations in Berkeley, Foster City, Culver City (Los Angeles), Santa Ana (Orange County), Pomona, Fresno, Sacramento, Bakersfield, Lancaster and San Diego, California; Phoenix, Tucson Arizona; Portland, Oregon; Denver, Colorado; Dallas, Texas; and Washington DC. [1]
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SolarCity was founded in July 2006 by brothers Peter and Lyndon Rive, including a $10M investment by entrepreneur Elon Musk (South African cousin of the Rive brothers), and has been the #1 provider of residential solar power in California since 2007, according to the database kept by the California Solar Initiative.[2] In March 2008, SolarCity received an Aspen Energy and Environment Award.[3] In May 2008, SolarCity completed the largest commercial solar installation in San Jose on the North Campus of eBay. In July 2008, SolarCity completed the largest commercial solar installation in San Francisco, for British Motors, consisting of 1,606 solar photovoltaic panels.[4] The company now has more than 700 workers and operates in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Texas, in addition to California.
In 2008 SolarCity introduced a new solar lease option, called SolarLease, that can significantly reduce or eliminate the upfront cost of installing solar power.[5] SolarCity's solar lease can allow some homeowners to pay less each month by adopting solar power than they previously paid for electricity from the utility company.[6][7] SolarCity installs panel technologies ranging in high efficiency from Sanyo to lower efficiency, cost-efficient thin-film solar modules from First Solar as well as string ribbon from Evergreen Solar, Sharp, Yingli, Kyocera and Suntech Power, among others.
SolarCity entered the electric car charging business by buying SolSource Energy and has also announced a partnership with Rabobank to make electric car charging available for free to owners of Tesla Motors' vehicles traveling on U.S. Route 101 in California between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Other cars that can make use of same charging technology are welcome.[8] In 2011, the company announced it would sell 240-volt electric car chargers manufactured by ClipperCreek for customers that currently lease solar panels.[9][10]
In 2010, SolarCity acquired Building Solutions, a software-enabled home energy audit firm and have begun to add home energy audits to their list of services.[11]
SolarStrong is SolarCity's five-year plan to build more than $1 billion in solar photovoltaic projects for privatized military housing communities across the United States. SolarCity plans to work with the country's leading privatized military housing developers to install, own and operate rooftop solar installations and provide solar electricity at a lower cost than utility power. SolarStrong is ultimately expected to create up to 300 megawatts of solar generation capacity that could provide power to as many as 120,000 military housing units, making it the largest residential photovoltaic project in American history. In November 2011, SolarCity and Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced that they have agreed to terms on financing for SolarStrong.[12]
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