Dive Brief:
- Solar-rooftop leader SolarCity has received all commitments to the largest aggregation facility for distributed generation solar projects created to date: a $250 million financing facility provided by a group of lenders that includes Bank of America Merril Lynch.
- The facility is meant to finance 200 MW of distributed solar generation at residential and business sites.
- Customer receivables back the loan, and once the solar roofs are deployed, the company expects to refinance the facility in the securitization market.
Dive Insight:
This isn't the only big thing SolarCity has done lately. Only the other day it joined with venture firms Vulcan Capital and Omidyar Network to put $7 million into a Tanzanian company, Off-Grid Electric, that provides solar lighting services in Africa.
Not that $7 million is a big investment, but it gets SolarCity into a huge new arena. Already the top player in the U.S. solar rooftop services market, where it has raised funds to finance $4 billion-worth of installations, SolarCity is now bringing the burgeoning pay-as-you-go model for solar to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
SolarCity's entrance into that market is another sign that off-grid solar technologies combined with mobile money are ready to take off.
