Thursday, July 28, 2011

SunPower Ties With Citi For $105M In Solar Lease Projects

San Jose-based Sunpower Corp., the installer of solar power systems, and finance firm Citi said this morning that they have created a new, residential solar lease fund worth $105M. According to the two, the new fund will be used by SunPower to extend leases to customers in eight states, with Citi contributing $80M to the fund. Solar leases are used by solar power installers to front the cost of hardware installation for photovoltaic power arrays, reducing in many cases the cost of installation to near zero for homeowners. In return, those homeowners pay a monthly amount for the solar power generated by those panels back to the solar lease provider.