With $50M Deal, San Diego Company Combines PV Solar, Financing, and New Roof

One of South Korea’s largest conglomerates led a $50 million Series A financing for OneRoof Energy, a San Diego company with a leasing program that enables homeowners to install photovoltaic (PV) solar tiles on their roofs without paying upfront costs.

The company says Hanwha International, part of the Seoul-based Hanwha Group, is getting a “significant, non-controlling stake” in the San Diego company. The Hanwha Group operates 59 affiliated companies, including Hanwha SolarOne, a global solar manufacturing company. OneRoof says Hanwha’s equity investment will enable the company to fund its rapid-growth plan, which calls for developing the residential solar leasing market by working with local roofing contractors and homebuilders.

OneRoof said it also has closed on an unspecified fund to finance these residential solar projects with Black Coral Capital, a Boston-based cleantech investment firm, and a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp. “We’re excited about the company as we think their approach of working closely with roofers is the next big step forward in lowering the cost of residential solar,” Black Coral VP Nikhil Garg wrote in an e-mail to Xconomy Boston.

San Diego’s OneRoof says it’s focused on installing PV solar tiles during new home construction or replacement roofs. OneRoof finances the solar installation, arranging a power purchase agreement, so homeowners pay no upfront costs. Instead, they make monthly lease payments to OneRoof. A homeowner’s monthly solar PV lease payment— combined with the promise of a significantly reduced electric utility bill—is intended to be lower than the homeowner’s monthly utility bill prior to the PV solar installation.

The new venture, if successful, appears to provide a new channel for Hanwha SolarOne to sell its PV solar tiles into the American residential market.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.