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Sunrun, the most important rooftop photo voltaic firm in america, just lately hit a giant milestone — a million clients. We just lately sat down with Chris Rauscher, Head of Grid Companies & Digital Energy Crops at Sunrun, to debate this and associated issues. Hearken to the podcast by way of the next embedded participant, or use one of many podcast community hyperlinks on the underside of this artcle.
I’m simply going to tug out a number of key quotes and a few enjoyable stats shared within the podcast. Hearken to the complete pod for extra nuance, context, info, and enjoyable.
To begin with, Rauscher famous that 20% of rooftop photo voltaic PV methods within the US are actually Sunrun methods. That’s a large portion of a giant photo voltaic market. Moreover, 45% of all new battery installations within the US are Sunrun installations.
Our personal Scott Cooney requested how the corporate achieved that 20% market share of rooftop photo voltaic methods, and Rauscher responded as follows: “I feel self-discipline. You realize, we’ve all the time prioritized sustainable development, and actually preserve self-discipline on our core competencies. And, you understand, we’ve seen a number of churn within the trade — each just lately but additionally trying again 4 or 5 years and even 10 years. And I feel Sunrun has had the flexibility to adapt and study from what’s been on within the broader photo voltaic ecosystem and preserve our self-discipline on our type of North Star there. Additionally, persevering with to supply compelling merchandise to our clients, and compelling providers, nice buyer care, after which persevering with to innovate, and I feel while you put these all collectively, that’s how we’ve achieved the size. And, plus, simply the demand for photo voltaic and batteries — it’s actually, actually sturdy proper now, and has been. That’s a tailwind we count on to proceed for the long run.”
I couldn’t assist however suppose that Chris was desirous about SolarCity a bit when he was speaking about this. SolarCity was as soon as the #1 rooftop photo voltaic system installer within the nation. Then, it appears the corporate bumped into monetary challenges, and Tesla acquired SolarCity. Recall that the founders and head executives of SolarCity have been cousins of Elon Musk, and Musk was Chairman of the Board. Whereas this was supposed to offer nice synergies and result in increasingly solar energy gross sales, this photo voltaic arm of Tesla’s enterprise shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. You possibly can see in Tesla’s newest shareholder letter from a number of days in the past that solar energy deployments declined quarter over quarter for the previous 4 quarters — and the decline truly goes again a lot additional than that, however I’ll dig into that extra in one other article. Let’s get again to the Sunrun story.
Scott and Chris additionally talked about digital energy crops (VPPs), and the way Sunrun clients are concerned in VPPs. In that dialogue, Rauscher famous that they’ve greater than 25,000 clients enrolled in VPP packages. “Proper now, that’s a scale that’s unseen at every other firm within the trade.”
Learn extra Sunrun information right here.
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