SolarCity has introduced LightMount, a lightweight roof mounting product that will maximize solar installation capacity on commercial building rooftops.

LightMount will be available exclusively to SolarCity customers for commercial rooftop solar installations.

LightMount was engineered to ease rooftop weight constraints and maximize the solar capacity of a system.

Commercial building rooftops have strict codes specifying weight constraints to comply with safety codes. On average, the distributed weight of conventional solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is about 3-4 pounds per square foot (lbs/sq.ft.) With LightMount, the distributed weight of PV panels is reduced to 2.3 lbs/sq.ft., which maximizes the space for solar.

"Many commercial users want to switch to solar energy to meet their company's sustainability goals. LightMount addresses the concerns faced by a lot of commercial users who can now qualify to install a solar system, or maximize the use of their rooftop space to deploy a larger solar system," said Erik Fogelberg, SolarCity's senior director of Commercial Sales.

Commercial customers who lease their real estate space are sometimes not allowed to make building changes that would penetrate the roof or the walls.

LightMount could be a solution in these cases because it is a non-penetrating racking product that is bonded to the rooftop creating a monolithic foundation for the solar PV system.