A Louisiana rooftop solar company is betting on a segment of the U.S. that its rivals have largely ignored: low-income households.
PosiGen LLC won 80% of Louisiana’s rooftop solar market and helped rebuild blighted parts of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Bloomberg reports. Its strategy: Target the low-income neighborhoods that other installers avoided.
The firm spread to Connecticut three years ago—thanks to a $5 million investment from Baton Rouge-based Stonehenge Growth Capital—and is now expanding into Minnesota and New Jersey.
CEO Thomas Neyhart expects to add as many as 3,000 homes this year.
“We want the people on disability, the people living paycheck to paycheck,” Neyhart says. “They’re the ones who can benefit the most from $50 off their monthly utility bill.”
That strategy comes with a disadvantage: raising financing is sometimes a challenge because some banks and Wall Street are leery about PosiGen’s revenue, which depends on monthly payments from low-income customers. Neyhart counters that he’s had just 47 defaults out of almost 13,000 homes. That’s less than 0.4% and compares favorably with better-known installers that target the high end of the market.
