Sunrun’s ‘storage-first’ strategy sees green shoots in Q3

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Sunrun solar panels.
Sunrun has posted revenue of US$724.6 million, marking the third consecutive quarter of growth this year. Image: Sunrun.

US residential solar and energy storage installer Sunrun has posted revenue of US$724.6 million in the third quarter of this year, marking the third consecutive quarter of revenue growth this year as the company implements its “storage-first strategy”.

The company’s revenue has grown from the US$569 million reported in the previous quarter, and represents a 35% year-on-year increase over the US$537.2 million recorded in the third quarter of 2024. This comes as the company shifts its focus towards residential battery energy storage system (BESS) deployments, with the energy storage attachment rate—the percentage of solar projects installed with co-located BESS—holding steady at 70% in the third quarter.

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This is ten percentage points higher than in the third quarter of 2024, and reflects a consistent increase in storage attachment rate, as shown in the graph below. The company has shifted its focus from residential solar installations to BESS installations, and the 412MWh of new storage capacity added in the third quarter of 2025 is a 23% increase over the same quarter in the previous year.

The graph also shows that, while solar capacity additions are lower in 2025 than in previous years, the trend in quarterly capacity additions remains unchanged from 2024. The third quarter saw 239MW of new residential solar capacity added, and as was the case in 2024, the capacity added has increased in every quarter.

Sunrun’s other key performance metric—number of subscribers—continued to tick upwards, with 30,104 new subscribers to the company’s products in the third quarter. While this is a 1% year-on-year decrease compared to the third quarter of 2024, it is a marginal improvement over the 28,823 new subscribers added in the second quarter of 2025 and puts the company’s total subscriber base at 971,085.

These positive figures have helped minimise the company’s losses over the last year. In the third quarter of 2025, Sunrun’s losses stood at US$277.8 million, compared to losses of US$412.2 million in the third quarter of 2024. Indeed, the company’s operations generated a profit of US$3.7 million in the third quarter of the year, contrasting with a loss of US$223.5 million in the first nine months of the year.

Notably, Sunrun has generated US$1.2 billion in proceeds in the first nine months of the year, double the US$557.1 million generated in the first nine months of 2024.

Sunrun has also effectively monetised tax credit transfers, which have formed an increasingly lucrative part of the US clean energy space. US thin-film manufacturer First Solar has made headlines for exceeding US$2 billion in tax credit transfer value. In comparison, Sunrun’s proceeds from the sale of investment tax credits (ITCs) reached US$295.8 million in the third quarter of this year, up from US$222.9 million in the same period in 2024.

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