Google to finance residential rooftop solar installations
Reporting from San Francisco — Google Inc. wants homeowners to use solar panels to generate electricity. And it’s investing $75 million to help as many as 3,000 of them install panels on their roofs.
The Internet search giant said Tuesday that it would create a fund for solar installers to offer financing plans.
One of the biggest hurdles to installing solar panels is the upfront costs. Homeowners often don’t have the necessary cash, and solar installers don’t have the means to offer financing.
Google said its plan would allow homeowners to install a $30,000 solar electricity system with little or no money upfront. Homeowners instead would pay a monthly fee that would be about the same or less than what they would pay in their monthly electric bills to their local utility.
This is Google’s second investment in residential solar, bringing its total investment to more than $850 million to develop clean energy, Rick Needham, the company’s director of green business operations, wrote in a blog post.
In June, Google created a $280-million fund to help finance rooftop installations. At the time it said the deal with SolarCity, a solar panel installation company in San Mateo, Calif., was the largest green investment it had ever made.
Founder and Chief Executive Larry Page has pushed Google to experiment with energy-saving technologies. The company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters installed a rooftop solar array in 2007.
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