The solar rental program can boost Tesla’s renewable energy business (Image via: Aws.amazon.com)

Elon Musk Introduces Tesla's Solar Rental Program

On Sunday, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk tweeted an announcement about the company’s plan to rent solar-panels to six states in the U.S. Tesla offers the people in California, Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Mexico, to rent its solar-power systems than to buy them. Elon Musk said that the potential customers live in states with high energy costs. He also said that even though it’s better to buy the company’s renewable energy panels, a rent would be the cheaper alternative.

Tesla set a renting price from $65 for a small installation to $195 for its largest installation. The solar-panel customers will only need to pay $100 as a fully refundable charge. On his tweet, Elon Musk stated that customers don’t need long-term contract. They can cancel it whenever they want. However, it would cost them $1,500 to remove the solar power system after it has been installed. It would be a reasonable rule for a company that doesn’t want to lose its customers.

The solar rental program is one of the efforts from Tesla to fix its renewable energy business. The company started as electric car maker. Tesla bought the residential solar installer SolarCity for $2.6 billion in 2016. However, the number of installation has been dropped recently that there were only 29 megawatts of new solar installations in the second quarter. It’s a small number compared to its rival, such as SunRun and Vivint Solar. SunRun had installed 103 megawatts. Meanwhile, Vivint Solar installed 56 megawatts. Both rivals have sales partnership with retailers and homebuilders, such as Home Depot, BJ’s Wholesale, Costco and Sam’s Club. Tesla decided to do another way by cutting off its partnership with Home Depot. The company also stop doing door-to-door marketing.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/18/tesla-pitches-a-solar-rental-program-to-boost-its-renewable-energy-business/amp/