PosiGen wins another $200M for lower-income rooftop solar

PosiGen, a New Orleans–based rooftop-solar company, last month secured an additional $200 million in funding from Brookfield Asset Management. PosiGen caters to lower-income homeowners who are often overlooked by the big residential solar players. 

Most residential solar installers target wealthier ZIP codes and customers with high FICO credit scores and above-average utility bills. In stark contrast, PosiGen offers a ​“no credit check” transaction that makes its money-saving energy services accessible to families across the wealth spectrum, especially those with a higher percentage of their income going to power and fuel bills, known as having a high ​“energy burden.”

“We don’t look at FICO; instead we ask if this person is a good payer. Every month people pay their cell phone bill first, their utility bill second, their auto bill third, and their house note fourth,” Ben Healey, president of capital markets and strategy at PosiGen, told Canary Media. PosiGen doesn’t care about credit scores or debt-to-income ratios because the firm believes that if it can save its customers enough money, they will view the company as just as important as a utility and prioritize paying their monthly PosiGen bill. 

“Every financial model that we build starts with customer savings,” said Healey. ​“You cannot be a PosiGen customer — we will turn you down — if we cannot save you money.” 

PosiGen works with banks and financial institutions like Brookfield to finance the installation of solar panels with the help of tax credits. The panels are then leased to homeowners in an arrangement called third-party ownership — as opposed to the 20-year loans that other installers offer to homeowners to enable them to buy their own arrays.

While rooftop solar panels might be the most visible, shiny piece of the PosiGen process, ​“somewhere between 25 and 75 percent” of the consumer’s monthly energy savings could come from efficiency measures such as sealing heating and cooling leaks, replacing thermostats, and installing LED lights, Healey said. 

Since its founding in 2011, PosiGen has served more than 30,000 homeowners across 15 states — about half of them in communities of color — by offering annual savings of over 15 percent on electricity bills. PosiGen now has more than 750 employees with more than 65 percent of its staff identifying as women and/​or Black, Indigenous, or people of color.

As PosiGen has grown, it has expanded beyond its in-house installer team to include a network of outside contractors. ​“For a long time, we didn’t want to let anybody else talk to our customers, because we didn’t trust anybody else to deliver the savings story,” Healey said. ​“But now we have between three and four dozen partners.” 

“The partners that are coming onto our platform could make an extra nickel or a dime if they were using somebody else’s financing, but they’re now going into neighborhoods that would never see a salesperson. They don’t have to go down and have an awkward conversation with a customer about what their credit score is and wait to see whether they get a yes or a no.”

A Posigen customer can typically save $30 per month on their electricity bills.

With its new $200 million investment, Brookfield has now put a total of $600 million into PosiGen’s finance model since 2023. PosiGen’s daily operations are supported by venture and equity investors including Magnetar Capital, Emerson Collective, Irradiant Partners, Activate Capital, The Builders Fund, and SJF Ventures. The Kresge Foundation has also invested in PosiGen, and GAF Energy, a solar-powered roof shingle supplier, has provided tax equity capacity to the company. 

Can low-income solar survive a Trump rollback?

How much will the Trump administration slow or halt President Biden’s billion-dollar renewable-energy incentive programs? That’s the existential question being asked in every clean power sector supported by current energy policy.

In PosiGen’s case, its business model depends on the federal investment tax credit for residential rooftop solar, as well as additional federal incentives or ​“adders” for use of solar panels made with domestic content or deployment in places with vulnerable energy workforces or low-income communities. 

Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress could reduce or phase out the residential-solar investment tax credit, and it could roll back the adders, which were put in place by the Inflation Reduction Act. 

“Existing PosiGen customers have nothing to worry about,” said Healey. ​“Their prices are locked in.” But it could be game over for PosiGen’s future expansion in ​“specific markets” if federal policy is changed, Healey said. 

“If I can take the low-income or the energy-community adder, we can support a [partner] company in West Virginia,” said Healey. ​“Without the energy-community adder, nobody else is doing [third-party-ownership rooftop solar] in West Virginia.”

“What is likely to happen is that it would force a change in our pricing that would limit the market that we can serve. We would only be serving those who could save with state-based policies,” Healey continued. ​“I have coached our board to understand that we are preparing for uncertainty and a slower growth future.”

Ben Airth, policy director at Freedom Forever, a national residential solar installer, is also looking to states this year. ​“It’s truly at the state level where we’re going to see solar policies realized,” he said. He cited the example of California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program, which offers dedicated incentives for low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Airth declined to speculate on how the incoming presidential administration might change the landscape for residential solar, though he expects the situation to be largely status quo for most of 2025. 

Healey continues to be driven by PosiGen’s mission, despite the political headwinds: ​“I fundamentally believe that the question of equity and access to clean energy is critical to our collective future. If folks are excluded, you’re not gonna build political support, you’re not going to have a story that works, you’re not going to actually serve those that matter.”