Clean Power Finance, headquartered in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, is a financial services and software company for the residential solar industry. Clean Power Finance operates the CPF Market, an online

business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) refers to trade and commercial activity where a business sees other businesses as its customer base. This typically occurs when: * A business sources materials for its production process for ...

platform that connects institutional investors and lenders with residential solar professionals who need solar finance products to grow their businesses. The company was founded in 2006 by

Match.com Match.com is an online dating service with headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company has offices in Dallas, West Hollywood, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing. Match.com is owned by Match Group, which owns several online d ...

founder and

serial entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entrepreneu ...

Gary Kremen Gary Kremen (born 20 September 1963) is an American engineer, entrepreneur and politician who founded the personals site Match.com, was the first registrant of Sex.com and founder of Clean Power Finance, and was a board member of the Santa Clara ...

, and for the first five years sold CPF Tools to solar installers and originators. In early 2011, Nat Kreamer, a co-founder of

Sunrun Sunrun Inc. is an American provider of photovoltaic systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company was established in 2007 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Since its inception, ...

, joined the company as CEO. In April 2011, the company began making residential solar finance products available to qualified channel partners. Finance products allow installers to offer a variety of financing options to consumers who want less expensive solar electricity immediately without the hassle and expense of photovoltaic solar system ownership. Clean Power Finance operates the largest network of solar professionals in the United States. Clean Power Finance has raised more than a billion dollars in residential solar project financing, and currently manages more than half a billion dollars on behalf of fund investors, including Google Inc. ($75MM), Kilowatt Financial ($250MM), an unnamed utility holding company, and Integrys Energy Group subsidiary Integrys Energy Services In 2011, the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

awarded Clean Power Finance a $3MM grant as part of its

SunShot Initiative The SunShot Initiative is a federal government program run by the US Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office. It bills itself as a national effort to support solar energy adoption in order to make solar energy affordable for all Ame ...

to build a database and software tool to streamline solar permitting processes. In 2012, the DOE awarded Clean Power Finance two more grants. The first, for $500,000, supported development of an online marketplace for

Operations and Maintenance The technical meaning of maintenance involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure and supporting utilities in industrial, business, and residential installat ...

(O&M) services on installed residential solar systems. The second, for $1 million, supports online tools for solar companies to connect to sell and install residential solar more efficiently. The company currently operates in nine states:

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

and

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

. Clean Power Finance is an active solar industry leader. CEO Nat Kreamer was named a White House Champion of Change in the Veterans in Clean Energy and Climate Security category and was elected in May 2014 to serve as chairman of the board of directors at the

Solar Energy Industries Association The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), established in 1974, is the American national non-profit trade association of the solar-energy industry in the United States. In 2019, the group reported at least 1,000 member companies. SEIA i ...

(SEIA). Micah Myers, SVP of Corporate Development, is on the board of directors at the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA). The company has played a leading role in helping traditional power companies invest in the residential DG solar market. In 2016, Clean Power Finance merged with Kilowatt Financial to form Spruce Finance Inc.

DOE projects

Clean Power Finance is working on four DOE-supported projects: the National Solar Permitting Database, an O&M marketplace for solar installations, a website to connect solar specialists, and a

Big Data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

project with the DOE's

National Renewable Energy Laboratory The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research and ...

(NREL) to reduce customer acquisition costs. #The National Solar Permitting Database (NSPD) is a free, online database of information related to solar permitting requirements in cities and counties around the U.S. The project's goal is to minimize the time and resources required to complete a solar permit, which can add significant costs and delays for solar installers. In June 2013, Clean Power Finance debuted SolarPermit.org, which hosts the NSPD. #The second project involves O&M for solar installations. Ongoing system operations and maintenance is a concern that has kept potential solar project financiers out of the market. The O&M Marketplace, currently in beta mode, would help system owners, particularly third-party financiers, identify and contract with O&M service providers. #The third project is an online tool to allow companies with expertise in selling and marketing solar to efficiently connect and work with companies that specialize in solar installation. #The fourth project is in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Clean Power Finance is the only solar company involved in the project. It joins seven academic institutions to support NREL in developing a computational model that will analyze data from a network of U.S. solar installers and help identify new types of community- and regional-scale strategies that drive down solar financing and deployment costs. In 2012, Clean Power Finance completed a study of 273 solar installers in the top 12 states encompassing over 90% of residential solar market. This is the largest known study of residential solar installers to date. The goal was to assess current challenges with solar permitting and identify specific opportunities for improvement among the various authorities having jurisdictions (AHJs) that hold approval power in the completion of solar projects. Key findings include: **More than 1 in 3 installers avoid selling solar in an average of 3.5 jurisdictions because of associated permitting difficulties. **Re-submissions of plans occur in 24% of all installations and rework in 16% of all installations, respectively. **An average installation requires nearly 8 weeks to be processed by all relevant jurisdictions; staff times for installers, however, average just 14.25 hours. **13% of installations see requirements change during the installation process. **11% of installations encounter a situation where requirements for solar permitting have not even been set. **Difficulties with solar permitting are costly to both AHJs and the solar businesses.

Equity Investors

Clean Power Finance is a

privately held company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose Stock, shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the Private equi ...

. Its venture capital investors include four traditional electric power companies -

Duke Energy Duke Energy Corporation is an American electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company ranked as the 141st largest company in the United States in 2024 – its highest-ever placement on the ...

Edison International Edison International is a public utility A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilit ...

and two that chose to remain unnamed -

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

, Google Ventures, Hennessey Capital Management, Claremont Creek Ventures, Clean Pacific Ventures, and Sand Hill Angels. Clean Power Finance's board of directors is chaired by Rajiv Ghatalia and includes Ed Feo,

Joe Kraus Joe Kraus is the founder of Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, along with his long-time business partner Graham Spencer. Currently, Kraus is an Investment Partner on the GV team and President at Lime. Career A long time entrepreneur ...

, Nat Kreamer, and Ben Kortlang.Clean Power Finance (16 April 2013)
"Rajiv Ghatalia Named Chairman of the Board at Clean Power Finance"
'' www.cleanpowerfinance.com''.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official Website

National Solar Permitting Database

Companies based in San Francisco Solar power in the United States GV companies