SolarCity Corp. (SCTY) has just announced an agreement with electronics retailer Best Buy (BBY) to guide homeowners and businesses through the process of going solar.
The San Mateo, Calif.-based tech company, where Tesla (TSLA) Chief Executive Elon Musk serves as chairman, said Wednesday that it will soon station its sales people in about 60 Best Buy stores in Arizona, California, Hawaii, New York and Oregon to make the solar panel pitch directly to consumers.
These in-store SolarCity sales people will give shoppers on-the-spot estimates and explain how much money they could save by going solar. SolarCity’s communications Vice President Jonathan Bass told Re/code that SolarCity “doesn’t charge for installation, only for the power generated each month”. Since that’s usually less expensive than utility power, “consumers typically see about 10 to 15 percent drop in their total energy bill per month.”
“When you offer someone a chance to purchase clean energy and pay less for it than energy produced by fossil fuels … we get a lot of yeses,” he said.
Today’s agreement formalizes an experiment the two companies carried out last September at Best Buy stores in California and New York to see if the idea was worth pursuing.
“People go to Best Buy to buy all sorts of devices and appliances, and almost everything you buy consumes a tremendous amount of electricity — your flat-screen TV, your dishwasher,” SolarCity Chief Executive Lyndon Rive said in an interview. “Now we can sell a product that addresses those energy needs.”
Shares of SolarCity climbed 4.23% to $76.45 early Wednesday, while Best Buy was down 1.54% at $25.59.
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