By BRIAN DOWLING
The Hartford Courant
The state’s green bank on Friday closed on a $60 million deal that will finance leases for more than 2,000 rooftop solar systems for residential and commercial customers.
The Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority used $9.5 million in state funds to attract more than $50 million from banks like U.S. Bancorp and a number of local and regional banks in Connecticut. The program will finance leases for about 14.1 megawatts of residential and commercial rooftop solar systems.
Under the lease model, which has grown in popularity in recent years, customers have the option of paying little or no upfront cost for the solar setup. In turn, they pay a lease fee as well as small utility bills for what electricity the residence still pulls from the power grid.
SolarCity and Sunrun sell the leases in Connecticut and do financing, installation and maintenance for their systems. Read more…