 |
Tesla Energy is a subsidiary of Tesla, Inc. which is headquartered in Fremont, California which is involved in developing, building, installing and selling solar energy generation systems, battery energy storage products, as well as other related products and services to residential, commercial and industrial customers in the world. The company was originally founded as SolarCity in Foster City, California on 4th July, 2006 by Peter and Lyndon Rive, who happens to be cousins of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Tesla later purchased Solarcity Corp in the year 2016.
Solarcity Corp was founded in the year 2006 by brothers Peter and Lyndon Rive, on the basis of suggestion for a solar company concept by their cousin, Elon Musk, who also happen to be the chairman of Solarcity Corp and even helped start the company. By the year 2009, solar panels it had installed were capable of producing 440 megawatts (MW) of power.
In 2011, the Solarcity Corp launched their expansion towards the East Coast with some acquisitions like the solar division of Clean Currents and groSolar. After the acquisitions, Solarcity Corp expanded its operations on the East Coast and opened up in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Florida, Vermont and New Hampshire.
In the year 2013, Solarcity Corp was the leading residential solar installer in the United States and Solar Power World magazine listed it as the number two overall solar installation company in the United States. In 2013, Solarcity Corp bought Paramount Solar from Paramount Equity for $120 million. By 2015, the installed panels of Solarcity Corp were capable of generating 870 MW of solar power and accounted for almost 28% of non-utility solar installations in the U.S. the same year.
In October 2014, Solarcity Corp made an announcement that it would be offering up to $200 million in solar bonds, and would launch a new online website to allow purchasing the bonds and this happens to be the first registered public offering of such bonds in the United States. In March 2016, SpaceX bought $90 million of Solarcity Corp stock.
In late 2015, Solarcity Corp withdrew from solar sales and installation in Nevada, following the decision by the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to raise the monthly service charge for rooftop solar customers and progressively reduce the return on solar energy sold back into the grid under the state's net metering rule; meanwhile, the rates given to rooftop solar generating customers for their surplus solar energy were also reduced and continued to decline over the ensuing four years. As a result of all these, Solarcity Corp had to eliminate more than 550 jobs in Nevada.
Solarcity Corp present energy generation products include solar panels (built by other companies for Tesla), the Tesla Solar Roof (a solar shingle system), and the Tesla Solar Inverter. The company also builds the Tesla Powerwall, a home energy storage device, and the Tesla Powerpack and Megapack grid energy storage systems.
As in the year 2020, the company deployed solar energy systems capable of generating 205 megawatts and deployed 3 gigawatt-hours of battery energy storage products.
More