Terra Energy aims to make signing up for solar as easy as signing up for cell phone service

The company, which offers solar subscriptions to homeowners on an initial 36-month agreement, seeks to retain those customers for the long-term by proving it can offer something better than the alternative.

April 14, 2026 Ben Zientara

Aerial photo of a home with a Terra Energy system on the roof

Image: Terra Energy

Florida-based solar-as-a-subscription startup Terra Energy is attempting to upend the traditional model of third-party owned residential solar.

Rather than asking homeowners to sign up for a 20- or 25-year lease or power purchase agreement, the company offers a 36-month subscription that requires no upfront investment, places no liens on the home and offers a fixed monthly rate with a 1.9% annual escalator.

The homeowner experience of this subscription is incredibly simple, says Terra Energy CEO Jaime Martinez. “Our approach is to make a product that is very digestible and easy to sign up for from the customer side — it’s a short term commitment like a car lease or cell phone service,” he said in an interview with pv magazine USA. “If we are the best source of energy in that specific location, there’s no reason why customers should not continue to buy the service from us.”

While the value proposition for homeowners relies on simplicity and ongoing savings compared to energy from the grid, the back end is where it gets complicated. Martinez says the company carefully controls costs and runs numbers to ensure it projects long-term profitability for its operations.

A key part of that is doing everything in-house, something Martinez says sets it apart from the “fragmented” approach of other solar leasing companies, which he said have been forced to rely on third-party sales organizations that sell to contractors that then subcontract engineering, permitting, logistics and more in order to quickly develop enough volume to attract financiers who would package and securitize the future returns of long-term subscriptions sold in this way.

“By the time a solar system (from these companies) gets installed and commissioned on a rooftop, you have a very large customer acquisition cost and a lot of soft cost and margins on top of the actual hardware itself,” said Martinez. “We decided to vertically integrate our entire operation. So, we do our sales, our engineering, logistics and our asset management. We control the entire support, the entire chain. Our game is not a securitization game where we just get financing based on these long-term contracts. We own all of our assets.”

The approach appears to be successful for Terra Energy. Martinez said the company now has 10,000 customers and has offered subscriptions in Mexico for more than ten years and in Florida for more than three. Its rate of retaining customers in Mexico past the initial 36-month term is 98%, with 100% of those customers who have crossed the 36-month mark in Florida still on board.

Terra Energy recently began serving areas in the deregulated energy market around Houston, Texas, pairing its solar installations with 40 kWh batteries to ensure homeowners can store excess solar energy and completely eliminate any per-kWh distribution charges. The company plans an expansion into more areas of the state later this year, and Martinez said a its first offerings in southern California pilot are 30 to 60 days away.

Martinez said his company wants to be intentional about how they approach new markets, first opening a small service area in places where they know they can provide energy cheaper than the alternative, and then spreading to the wider region as they learn the nuances of each state’s market.

In early 2026, Terra Energy announced new rounds of funding totaling $105 million, including a $35 million green loan from Breakwell Capital, equity investments from ARC PE and Azora Capital and credit facilities from Banesco and First Horizon Bank.

This financial vote of confidence echoes what Martinez is hearing from Terra Energy’s equipment providers. “Suppliers are very happy to work with us because they see that this is a product that is scaling a lot faster than anything else,” he said. “In a time where the industry faces a lot of challenges, they like working with a company that is growing aggressively and expanding to different markets when everyone else is down.”

More information about the company’s services can be found on its website.

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