The staff at SolarCity couldn’t have picked a better day to welcome guests to their new facility on Boulevard of the Generals Thursday morning. Under cloudless skies, state and local officials were invited to tour the 20,000-square-foot operations center of the nation’s top solar provider, which opened in May.

IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR SOLARCITY - SolarCity Founder & CEO Lyndon Rive, Chairman Elon Musk, and SolarCity Founder & COO Peter Rive celebrate the companyís IPO by posing for a photo at the NASDAQ Stock Market on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012 in New York. SolarCity is a leader of distributed clean energy and will trade under SCTY. (Mark Von Holden/AP Images for SolarCity)

IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR SOLARCITY – SolarCity Founder & CEO Lyndon Rive, Chairman Elon Musk, and SolarCity Founder & COO Peter Rive celebrate the companyís IPO by posing for a photo at the NASDAQ Stock Market on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012 in New York. SolarCity is a leader of distributed clean energy and will trade under SCTY. (Mark Von Holden/AP Images for SolarCity)

The operations center employs close to 50 salespeople, residential designers, surveyors and installers and is projected to more than double that number by adding a commercial design division and expanding to accommodate the region’s burgeoning solar market.

Founded in 2006 by technologist brothers Pete and Lyndon Rive and their cousin, Elon Musk, the CEO of electric automotive giant Tesla, California-based SolarCity provides renewable electricity to homeowners, businesses and municipal entities through a business model that allows customers to save up to 20 percent on energy expenses by utilizing solar systems installed with no up-front costs .

“That’s the unique thing about what SolarCity does. We sell you the power, not the panels,” said Lee Keshishian, SolarCity’s East Coast regional vice president, noting that more than 90 percent of the systems are owned by the company.

Read the rest of the story at the Times Herald.

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