FOSTER CITY, USA: SolarCity, the company that has enabled thousands of US homeowners, businesses and nonprofits to pay less for solar power than they previously paid for electricity from the local power grid, will now also provide energy efficiency services to further lower energy costs.
The company announced that it has acquired the assets of Building Solutions, a leading energy efficiency services and technology provider. The acquisition will allow SolarCity to roll out a wide range of energy-saving services including home energy evaluations; efficient heating, cooling and lighting; water heating; and duct and building envelope sealing. SolarCity plans to extend integrated solar and energy efficiency services across its service areas in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Texas.
The addition of energy efficiency will allow SolarCity to build on its strengths in financing, energy monitoring and customer service to provide additional ways for homeowners to save money by addressing a broader set of their energy needs. When the integration is complete, SolarCity expects to be able to complete hundreds of energy efficiency projects each month, representing the largest capacity for energy efficiency services in the U.S.
“We’ve been in the business of enabling customers to save money by generating clean energy, and now we can help customers save more money by using less energy,” said Peter Rive, co-founder and chief operating officer of SolarCity. “Our new services will help customers reduce their total energy bills by addressing natural gas usage as well as electricity.”
SolarCity is introducing energy efficiency services at a time when national enthusiasm for energy-saving measures is increasing. The US House of Representatives last week voted to approve the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act, better known as "cash for caulkers," which would extend $5.7 billion in rebates to U.S. homeowners that invest in energy efficiency improvements. Fifteen U.S. states have passed legislation to enable Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing to make energy efficiency projects more affordable.
“Building Solutions has built the most advanced set of software tools for assessing energy efficiency return-on-investment that we’ve seen,” added Rive. “This integrated software platform, combined with the momentum from emerging financing mechanisms like PACE, will enable us to make energy efficiency services far more affordable and accessible.”
Both SolarCity and Building Solutions have developed extensive software portfolios to support their service offerings. SolarCity will integrate its proprietary solar project modeling, management and monitoring software with Building Solutions’ Web-based energy efficiency assessment software to create a powerful new analytical tool.
SolarCity will be capable of calculating and presenting optimal energy and cost-saving recommendations to homeowners based on their homes’ architecture, electricity and gas usage, ventilation, appliance selection, heating and cooling equipment and a range of other factors.
SolarCity’s PowerGuide remote energy usage monitoring platform will also help customers identify additional opportunities to save energy and money even after efficiency improvements have been made.
“We’ve felt for some time that we had developed a product and service offering with tremendous potential, and we’ve been looking for ways to help it benefit more homeowners,” said James Quazi, co-founder and president of Building Solutions.
“We’ve been working with SolarCity for years, and have been consistently impressed with the growth, breadth and scale of the company’s operations. SolarCity’s financing options, operational capabilities and service footprint create a means to deliver energy efficiency services to far more customers than we could reach on our own.”
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