US residential PV installer and leasing company Sunrun has formed a nationwide partnership to market its solar services to the clients of Associa, a company which provides property services to communities.
Associa is a prominent homeowners’ association (HOA), claiming to serve as many as four million people across a million US households. The company provides services including housing association management, rental management including leasing and sales, financial and accounting and asset management. Associa also “masterplans” the construction of housing for whole communities.
Sunrun will be added to Associa’s preferred vendor programme. Vice president of Sunrun Direct, Bill Schuh, said the deal would allow the company to market its services to “new types of homeowners and communities across the country”.
The deal is the latest in a line of tie-ins between solar and companies in the property sector, particularly in, but not limited to, the US. SunPower has a deal with production home builder KB Home, which churns out mass-marketed houses in California but also in Germany and Australia at limited scales.
Elsewhere, Solar Frontier has a deal in Japan with Sekisui Heim, another production home builder, to power Sekisui Heim’s “Smart Power Station” net zero energy houses. Meanwhile German solar energy storage firm ASD Sonnenspeicher, a much smaller company than either SunPower or Solar Frontier, has struck a similar deal with prefabricated homebuilder Weberhaus.
