Dive Brief:

• Google, Inc., and SunPower Corporation have announced a new $250 million fund, with $100 million from Google and $150 million from SunPower, to pay for and own rooftop solar systems leased to homeowners at a rate below their normal electricity bill and maintained by the funders.
• SunPower, which already leases some 20,000 systems and is one of the leaders in the third party ownership financing model, builds residential, commercial, and utility-scale solar with the high efficiency, high reliability modules it manufactures.
• Google now has more than $1 billion invested in 16 renewable energy projects representing 2,000 megawatts of installed capacity, enough to power some 500,000 U.S. homes.

Dive Insight:

The third party ownership finance model, which has driven unprecedented rooftop solar growth, eliminates the high upfront costs and maintenance responsibilities of having a rooftop solar system.

With third party ownership, funders like Google and SunPower get the benefits of ownership, including the investment tax credits and accelerated depreciation, and the homeowner pays a lease fee that is usually about 20% below the home’s utility bill. 

This is Google’s third rooftop solar funding but unlike SolarCity, which uses a variety of qualified modules, and Clean Power Finance, which allows its partner-installers to select from each fund's pre-approved equipment, the SunPower investment goes into a completely vertically integrated company that supplies the modules and does the installation and maintenance itself.