"There's been no incentive for institutional property owners to put solar arrays on their buildings because they don't pay for it, it's a pass through to tenants," a source familiar with the partnership tells GlobeSt.com. With this new business model, he says, building owners gain rental revenue and a green feature with no out-of-pocket expense, tenants get "green" power at or below their current utility rate and Recurrent gets to sell the power its rooftop equipment generates.

The financing packages follow $10 million in start-up capital the company obtained in early 2007 to get itself off the ground, says Harris, who entered the solar power business six years ago when he founded Prevalent Power Inc., which he sold in 2005 to EI Solutions. Harris says he stayed on with the company as general manager after the sale, helping it land the contract for the nation's largest corporate solar installation at Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View. Powered up earlier this year, the 1.6-megawatt system is enough to power 1,000 homes.

With his new business, Harris' goal is to "move away from one-roof, one sale and get to a point where we can do portfolio financings." The plan is only to build solar arrays on the rooftops of buildings where the tenants already have agreed to purchase the power, which is to say they won't be installing the arrays speculatively. "We like to see the tenant there when we first build it," he says.

Because the sun doesn't shine everywhere all the time, the buildings stay connected to the local utility grid. Solar power typically displaces the expensive, peak-time utility power, according to Harris. Recurrent's solar service will typically shave between 5% and 10% from a building's previous electric bill, he says.