Residential Solar Embraces Leasing, Power Purchase Agreements (CA)

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52391

The use of power purchase agreements (PPAs) and similar leasing instruments to finance residential solar power installations is poised for a boom this year which could prove to be as healthy as the commercial solar PPA market was in 2007, several solar integrators in California suggest.

"There were approximately 10,000 homeowners with solar power last year in California, and most say that there will be a 30-to-40 percent growth rate in the state this year," says Nat Kreamer, CEO of Sun Run, a Silicon Valley start-up that offers power purchase agreements to finance most of the cost of installing a system.

Jon Guice, head of research at green energy consultancy AltaTerra, in Palo Alto, is bullish on PPAs in particular. "PPAs can drive the residential solar market because it makes the acquisition financially acceptable; it could change the whole solar value chain," he reckons. "Last year half of all the commercial solar installs in the United States were PPAs, and this year that number is running between 60-to-80 percent," he notes.

Sun Run appears to have been the first company to tap the PPA contract for residential applications in the United States, when it began offering the deals in fourth quarter 2007. "Sun Run is the first PPA-based residential distributed power company in this country — I'm not sure about the rest of the world. We have customers throughout the PG&E, SCE and SDE utility regions which are buying electricity from us under PPAs," says Kreamer.

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