Tesla's SolarCity lost ground to Sunrun in 2018
The first three quarters of 2018 show that Sunrun's residential solar panel sales have outpaced SolarCity's residential solar panel sales, according to data from analysis firm Wood Mackenzie. Though Tesla, the owner of SolarCity, has been losing ground in the solar panel market-share game for years now, Sunrun's new upset shows just how far Tesla has pulled SolarCity back. [...] SolarCity has gone from cornering 33.5 percent of the US' residential solar panel market share to holding on to just 9.1 percent of the same market, according to Wood Mackenzie's numbers.
[...] Sunrun has pursued none of the same cutbacks that Tesla has imposed on SolarCity. As a result, Sunrun's market share rose in the first three quarters of 2018 to 9.5 percent. The company said in its third quarter financial report that it "added 13,000 customers and 100 megawatts of deployments," which represents record volume for Sunrun.
The Wood Mackenzie numbers show that Sunrun installed 163 megawatts (MW) of residential solar panels in the first three quarters of 2018. SolarCity installed just 156 MW. An analyst said that, as SolarCity's sales have faltered, large regional solar installers have picked up the bulk of the slack.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:32AM (1 child)
I called and emailed them in 2014. Was ready to buy a complete system (I mostly wanted a PowerWall as a whole-house UPS, but the only way to get that was to put up panels too. Ok, fine, sign me up). They still haven’t returned my call after almost five years. When someone is trying to give you money, it seems to me the correct response should be, "thank you!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @10:15PM
They don't really make their money on installs, they make it from those leases/power agreements. As a test, my uncle's two sons (who live next door to each other and have different last names due to reason) called to have stuff installed years ago. One said he wanted to buy outright and the other said he wants to lease. The one who wanted to lease had them call back the same week and scheduled an in-home consultation for a month out, which actually happened before the scheduled date because the salesman dropped by a week early because "he was in the neighborhood." The other brother didn't get his first call back until the week after his brother's scheduled consultation and basically told him not to bother when they couldn't pivot him to the lease on the phone. They both ended up saying they weren't interested, and guess which of the two brothers is the only one to get crap in the mail about installing solar. They couldn't even be bothered to add the other one to their mailing list.