The transition from solar leases to solar loans is continuing, with Vivint the latest entry into the market. Vivint has chosen to partner with Californias Mosaic to roll out solar loans.
Solar loans, where the household owns the rooftop array as opposed to leasing or under a Power Purchase Agreement with the provider, is seen to be the next evolution of the U.S. solar market, presenting a number of advantages to the household. GTM Research produced a forecast last year in which I anticipated third-party ownership to peak at 68% of the U.S. residential market with loans the fast growing competitor.
Advantages of a solar loan is that it allows the household to own the system once the loan is paid off, federal tax credits and local incentives also flow to the owner rather than the lease provider, and complications that may arise when a property is sold are avoided.
We want to provide our customers multiple products to choose from to enable them to ‘go solar,' said Vivint Solars Chance Allred. If a customer wants instant financing or wants to eventually own their own solar energy system, we can now help them do that.
Vivints partnership with Mosaic sets apart its loan offering. Mosaic first moved into providing solar loans in June 2014. The company formerly drew only of crowdfunding for its solar projects but now also works with institutional investors. A pool of funds is created from both finance sources from which the loans are drawn.
"Mosaic's investors will provide crowdsourced capital, which will be combined with long-term institutional capital, to finance our low cost home solar loans," said Mosaic CIO Greg Rosen when first announcing its loan product.
"We're pleased to work with the second largest residential solar company in the U.S. to make solar available to more customers in more markets," said Mosaics vice president of sales Ted Fawcett, speaking to the Vivint deal.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.