• SunPower filed bankruptcy on Monday
• SunPower was originally going to be GM’s installer for home energy storage systems
• A decade ago SunPower was the most popular choice amongst companies for solar installations

Solar company SunPower, which was once set to be the designated installer for General Motors home energy storage systems, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S.

As reported by Electrek, SunPower submitted its bankruptcy filing to a Delaware court late Monday. In the filing, SunPower reported its assets and liabilities to be between $1 billion and $10 billion, and said it would sell parts of its business to Complete Solaria for $45 million in cash.

A decade ago, SunPower was the most popular choice among big corporations seeking to add solar installations. But in recent years it seems to have had trouble keeping up with the competition on cost. And Tesla’s continued struggles with solar underscore it’s not an easy market to squeeze into.

SunPower was also at the leading edge of the convergence of EV charging and solar, with a partnership with Wallbox in 2021 pretty much assuring that it would have a role in this merging of market segments. GM initially tapped SunPower as the installer for its Ultium Home systems, but a few months ago the automaker announced that it was switching to Qmerit.

2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV with GM Ultium Home energy system

“GM and SunPower reached a mutual decision to discontinue their work together earlier this year. GM Energy remains committed to delivering its residential suite of products to customers alongside our preferred installer, Qmerit,” the automaker said in a statement.

GM said in 2023 that it would add bidirectional charging to all EVs using its Ultium component set, with vehicle-to-home (V2H) hardware supplied buy its new GM Energy business allowing these EVs to serve as backup power sources. That hardware takes the form of the Ultium Home V2H Bundle GM detailed last year.