Sunrun doesn’t just sell solar panels — it owns them. The company’s bread and butter is the solar lease and power purchase agreement model, where homeowners get panels installed at little to no upfront cost and pay a monthly rate for the electricity produced. That approach removed the biggest barrier to residential solar adoption: the five-figure price tag.
After acquiring Vivint Solar in 2020, Sunrun became the largest residential solar company in the U.S. with over 900,000 customers. The company designs, installs, and maintains full solar-plus-storage systems, pairing panels with battery backup (primarily LG and Tesla Powerwall units) so homeowners can ride out grid outages. Sunrun also runs a virtual power plant program in several states, aggregating its fleet of batteries to provide grid services and earn revenue that gets passed back to customers.
Sunrun operates in more than 20 states and employs roughly 13,000 people. The company generates recurring revenue from its installed base — long-term contracts that typically run 20 to 25 years — giving it a predictable cash flow profile unusual in the energy sector. With IRA incentives boosting demand and grid reliability concerns pushing more homeowners toward backup storage, Sunrun has been accelerating battery attachment rates, now pairing storage with the majority of new installations.
