Sunday, May 17, 2015
Google invests $300 million in U.S. residential solar projects
The Google logo is spelled out
in heliostats during a tour of the Ivanpah Solar Electric
Generating System in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada
border
The money will be used by SolarCity to put solar panels on homes.
Homeowners then will pay a monthly fee to lease the panels from the
company. The growth of such financing has made generating electric power
from the sun an option for households who do not want to shell out the
$20,000 to $30,000 upfront cost of a typical residential solar system.
The fund is the largest ever
created for residential solar systems, SolarCity said, and Google's $300
million equity stake is the technology giant's biggest renewable energy
investment to date. SolarCity is the top U.S. residential solar
installer.
As a so-called "tax equity"
investor in the fund, Google can claim federal tax credits worth 30
percent of a solar project's cost to reduce its tax burden. Tax equity
investors typically enjoy returns of 8 to 10 percent.
The remaining $450 million of the fund comes primarily from debt financing, according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass.
The investment is Google's second
with SolarCity. The company in 2011 established a $280 million fund
with the installer, which is backed by Tesla Motors Inc founder Elon
Musk. To date, Google has poured more than $1.5 billion into renewable
energy projects.
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