SolarCity & Vivint Solar Dominating US Home Solar Power

Clean Power

Published on October 21st, 2014 | by Zachary Shahan

October 21st, 2014 by Zachary Shahan 

CleanTechnica Note: Who knows what the future holds? But the present is very clear: the two top solar companies in the US home solar market, SolarCity and Vivint Solar, are dominating the market. At a tiny percentage of current electricity supply, massive home solar growth projected, lower and lower solar costs that make ownership and straight purchases more competitive, and potentially big policy changes coming shortly, things could change. However, early domination in a booming new market can be very, very hard to catch. Here are more thoughts and more details on SolarCity and Vivint Solar’s home solar power domination, via Planetsave:

New data from GTM Research shows that the top home solar companies in the 2nd quarter of 2014 were, by far, SolarCity and Vivint Solar. Together, the two companies took over 50% of the market. This is the first time the two have combined to surpass the 50% marker. The milestone is also a bit shocking to me, given how distributed the solar industry is.

Both SolarCity and Vivint Solar offer financing as well as installation, and both are now on the stock market (Vivint Solar just had its IPO).

With the home solar market growing fast, these top home solar companies are growing extremely fast.

Both companies rely heavily on solar leasing or PPAs. Vivint Solar actually offers PPAs only. However, the solar market is shifting to ownership via loans for a number of reasons. SolarCity seems ready to make the shift. It has just started offering its first home solar loans, and it says that it expects its market for that to be between $500 million and $1 billion in 2015.

I think it’s only a matter of time before Vivint Solar expands into loans as well. The writing is on the wall that this is an increasingly important segment of the market.

I would think that the home solar power market would lend itself well to mom & pop companies and a distributed industry, but that’s simply not the way things work in this day and age, and it seems the market is moving more and more toward consolidation. If that’s the case, it is going to be hard for anyone to catch up with SolarCity and Vivint Solar. Sungevity and Sunrun have potential, and Sungevity has actually expanded into Australia and Europe (before the others). But there’s now a big gap between them and the top two home solar companies.

Images by SolarCity & Vivint Solar

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: SolarCity, Vivint Solar

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.