Tesla will rent you a solar array for $50/month

• Elon Musk is trying just about everything to reimagine the solar business. But will this one work?

Earlier this decade, the rise of third-party solar upended the U.S. residential solar market. Leases and power purchase agreements allowed companies like Sunrun, SolarCity, Vivint and Sungevity to provide rooftop solar to the masses in a way that eliminated the big up-front costs and credit checks associated with buying a $30,000 attachment to your home, and rapidly became the dominant business model.
But as loans got more sophisticated and Tesla moved SolarCity away from its path of aggressive sales and growth, the third-party solar market contracted. Currently the space has several successful companies, but most residential solar is sold through loans and direct purchases, and market leaders Sunrun and Vivint are plagued by ballooning customer acquisition costs.
As usual, Tesla is charting its own path. In a series of tweets on Sunday morning, Elon Musk revealed a new strategy: renting solar. The company is offering to rent homeowners a small, medium or large PV system, at $50-$195 per month, for systems ranging from 3.8 kW to 11.4 kW in capacity.
On Twitter, Musk was characteristically bullish about the ability of the offering to save customers money, estimating that this will save customers around $500 annually.