Written by Brian Eckhouse. This article first appeared on Bloomberg Markets.
SunPower Corp., the second-largest U.S. panel manufacturer, arranged more than $53 million in financing for residential-solar installations.
The deal supports installations in eight U.S. states, Natalie Wymer, a spokesman for San Jose, California-based SunPower, said in an email Friday. Consumer demand “continues to grow and we want to continue to be positioned to answer that call.”
The residential market is “where they ought to be focusing,” Joseph Osha, a San Francisco-based analyst at JMP Securities LLC, said in an interview Friday. “Residential solar may not grow at 50 percent, but there’s a market there.”
South African bank Investec Plc led the financing. Investec has been a go-to lender for U.S. residential solar deals. It arranged about $880 million in debt financing last year for U.S. rooftop-solar developers and financiers, more than half of the $1.5 billion raised market-wide.
SunPower, which is majority-owned by French energy giant Total SA, is both a manufacturer and developer, and is a co-sponsor of the 8Point3 Energy Partners LP yieldco that’s for sale. Its panels are used for utility-scale, residential, commercial and industrial projects.