By Ronald D. White | Los Angeles Times
The gig: Lyndon Rive, 36, chief executive of SolarCity Corp., a company co-founded in 2006 with his older brother, Peter, that helped popularize a new direction in residential solar power development. The San Mateo, Calif., company installs solar panels for homes, businesses and government entities. But instead of selling the panels to the customer, SolarCity usually retains ownership of them and sells the electricity to the client. That cuts out much of the upfront cost involved with going solar.
“The homeowner isn’t really required to do anything,” Rive said. “They get a smaller electric bill every month and they get the good feeling that comes from knowing that most of their home electricity is generated by clean energy from the sun.”
Sunny skies: SolarCity, which went public last December at $8 a share, now trades above $30. The company has about 3,500 employees and more than 68,000 customers in 14 states, up from about 1,400 employees and more than 18,000 customers at the end of 2011. In April, SolarCity opened a 75-worker operations center in Riverside County to meet growing demand in the Inland Empire. In August, the company opened a 61-worker operations center in Chatsworth.
Disclosure: Rose Law Group represents SolarCity
