SolarCity was founded in 2006 by brothers Peter and Lyndon Rive,[6] based on a suggestion for a solar company concept by their cousin, Elon Musk, who is the chairman and helped start the company. SolarCity has been the leading provider of residential solar power in California since 2007, its first full year of operation, according to the database kept by the California Solar Initiative[7] and was the number one residential solar installer in the U.S. in 2013, according to GTM Research.[8] In 2013, Solar Power World magazine listed SolarCity as the No. 2 overall solar installation company in the U.S.[9]
In October 2014, SolarCity announced it would be offering up to $200 million in solar bonds to launch a new online website to buy the debt, the first registered public offering of such bonds in the United States.[10]
In June 2016, Musk's car company, Tesla Motors, formally submitted an offer to acquire SolarCity.[11]
Locations[edit]
SolarCity is headquartered in San Mateo, California, but the company uses a distributed service model in which it provides installation from local operations centers. As of May 2016, SolarCity operates in 20 jurisdictions: Hawaii, the District of Columbia, and 18 other states on the West Coast, in the Southwest, and in the Northeast.[12]
Products, services and technologies[edit]
Solar leasing[edit]
In 2008, SolarCity entered the solar leasing market with a new solar lease option for homeowners.[13] SolarCity's solar lease can allow some homeowners, by adopting solar power, to pay less each month than they previously paid for electricity from the utility company.[14][15]
After a highly successful run during its initial years in Nevada, SolarCity withdrew from solar sales and installation in the state in late 2015, following the decision by the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to raise the monthly service charge for rooftop solar customers and progressively reduce the return on solar energy sold back into the...