Mosaic has partnered with California-based RGS Energy to offer a new loan program for the latter's residential system customers. The Mosaic home solar loan will be offered through its online finance platform.
The move is a departure from Mosaic's traditional business of packaging solar project financing as crowd-sourced investment opportunities and reflects a growing focus on the potential of the residential solar market. In February, the company teamed up with Connecticut's Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA) to extend its crowd-source model to residential system financing. The deal with RGS Energy sees Mosaic putting its own money up to finance residential solar projects.
‘The Connecticut announcement was about Mosaic's investors financing CEFIA's loan portfolio for Connecticut homeowners,’ says Billy Parish, Mosaic's founder and president. ‘The announcement of our home solar loan reinforces Mosaic's status as the first true peer-to-peer platform for solar, meaning we're not only offering investors home solar investments, we're also enabling homeowners to borrow directly on Mosaic's platform to finance their home solar installations.’
Parish says that fundamentally, these investments will be structured similarly to the company's past investments. However, the individual loans are smaller than commercial loans and there will be more of them, so investors will be able to diversify their portfolios by creating baskets of home solar loan notes.
RGS Energy says it will offer the Mosaic loan product to California homeowners in the first half of this year. Mosaic plans to package the loans as investments for qualified investors via its online platform.
‘While we continue to see strong demand for the leasing of solar power systems, there is also increasing interest in direct ownership by the homeowner,’ says Kam Mofid, RGS Energy's CEO, in a statement. ‘This offering helps RGS Energy deliver attractive and affordable solar options, while recognizing that different customers require different solutions to meet their particular needs.’
Parish says Mosaic plans to roll out the loan with other partners later this year.
