$100,000,000,000
SolarCity
Net Worth
Started in (City)
Fremont
Started in (Country)
United States of Americas
Incorporation Date
04th December, 2006
Bankruptcy Date
-
Founders
- Lyndon Rive
- Peter Rives
About
Solar City is a energy services provider and is located at San Mateo, California. With the workforce of more than 13,000 employees, the company has different sectors in designing, financing, marketing and installing power systems that work on solar energy. The company growth has been very rapid and also has proved to be of great assistance for America’s installation idea of solar photovoltaic systems. Solar City has actually played an important role in increasing the number of installed solar panels from 440MW in 2009 to 6,200MW in 2014.
Beginning
Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive, the brothers who launched solar city by following a suggestion from their cousin, Elon Musk. It was his idea to establish a solar company and he later even assisted the brothers in starting up their own company. Musk was on to be the chairman of Solar City. Within a year of its establishment, the company became the largest supplier of solar energy to homes in California. Though the company is based in San Mateo, California, it operates through various centres of distribution around the country. These are generally the local service providers that provides the energy to a particular area.
Road to Success
Solar City specializes in the designing and marketing of a number of products. Even though they started as service providers of solar energy, they later introduced the idea of solar leasing to the homeowners, which actually helped the company in saving a lot of money on their energy bills. In 2008, the company completed two major commercial solar installations in San Jose and San Francisco. They further started installing commercial solar equipment for companies like British Motor Car Distributors, Wal-Mart, Intel and even the U.S Army. In 2009, they bought a company called ’SolSource’ Energy Business and ventured into manufacturing electric chargers that can be used to charge the vehicle- batteries. In 2011, they announced a larger scale project named Solar Strong project, aimed at providing energy to privatized home of military personnel, the company launched their expansion to the East Coast with the proposition of the solar division of Clean Currents.
Solar City acquired Clean Fuel Connections Inc.’s, ’SolSource’ Energy business in the year 2009 and started manufacturing electric battery chargers for vehicle batteries. In 2013, SolarCity was the leading residential solar installer in the U.S. Solar Power World magazine listed it as the second in rank of overall solar installation companies in the U.S.
Immediately after its launch, the company started providing energy to sectors of residences in California and within a year it has become the largest supplier of solar energy for residences. Based on the database of California Solar Initiative and GTM Research, Solar City announced it ranked no.1 solar residential installer in America. It was also ranked as the Number 2 Solar Installation Company in USA in 2013, by the Solar Power World Magazine.
In March 2016, SpaceX bought SolarCity stock of worth $90 million.
Challenges
SolarCity shared more not so successful projections in its year-end earnings report, posted in February 2016, and its stock dropped by nearly a third in after-hours trading. SolarCity had always pointed that it was generating long-term retained value, from its leased rooftop solar systems, which it co-owned with its financial partners. The company essentially acted like a clean-energy utility that billed homeowners monthly. Now, in its pivot to profitability, instead of leasing panels to consumers, SolarCity’s core strategy would be to sell them, primarily through loans, which would lower SolarCity’s debt burden and generate interest. But that also meant customers would ultimately own their systems i.e., no more monthly payments. In May, then CFO Serra, tried to explain the change on an earnings call. Some analysts expressed confusion about this seemingly existential shift, with one asking what exactly is the business model they are following
In 2017, Elon Musk announced that production of Tesla’s solar roof products would be shifted to the Buffalo facility by the end of 2017. As of August 2017, It was reported that the production of solar roof tiles had begun at the facility, and Tesla expected to continue to ramp up production through the rest of the year. By the end of 2018, the facility employed about 800 workers. The state of New York required the company to employ at least 1,460 workers at the facility by April 2020 or face a $41.2 million penalty, and in February 2020, the company has around 1,500 workers at the facility. Panasonic announced that they will cease operations at the facility in May 2020.
Failures
In late 2015, the company has withdrawn from solar sales and installation in Nevada, following the decision by the state’s Public Utilities Commission to raise the monthly service charge for rooftop solar customers and progressively reduce the return on solar energy sold back into the grid under the state’s net metering rule. Under the new rules, the monthly service charge imposed on Nevada Power’s rooftop solar-generating customers rose to $17.90, and was scheduled to rise to $38.51 by the year 2020;paralelly, the rates given to rooftop solar generating customers for their surplus solar energy were also caught back and were to continue to decline over the ensuing four years. As a result, SolarCity terminated more than 550 people in only Nevada.
Achievements
- Solar City announced that it ranked no.1 in Solar Residential Installers in America.
- It was also ranked as the Number 2 Solar Installation Company in USA in 2013, by the Solar Power World Magazine.
Subsidies
- Tesla Inc.
CEOs
- Lyndon Rive