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When you get down into the meat of how the tax credits and Sunrun's financing work it's astonishing. Essentially it sounds like Sunrun's investors are paying t

by imgabe 8y ago

When you get down into the meat of how the tax credits and Sunrun's financing work it's astonishing. Essentially it sounds like Sunrun's investors are paying to install solar panels on your house so they can claim the tax credit to offset their own income. Meanwhile you are paying Sunrun for the electricity generated by the solar panels. There doesn't seem to be much benefit for the homeowner. You're better off buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the tax credit yourself. Then you'd only have to pay the utility for the electricity you don't generate. "The American way" anymore seems to be to take a good idea, overcomplicate it with financial engineering, and funnel the profits to a small minority of people who actually understand what's going on.

BeetleB 8y ago
>You're better off buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the tax credit yourself. Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. As for the tax credit, you do get it in the form of a discounted price. Over here, that's how all the solar companies pitch it. They'll install it for cheap, but the condition is that you pay them a big fraction of the tax credit the following 2 years. They make it clear that the reason they're giving you the panels at below market cost is so that you can pay them in tax credits that you file for and receive.
- imgabe 8y ago
  > Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. Ok? That is standard practice when you own a home. You are responsible for all the maintenance on your home. What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I assume they have to be cleaned every so often. Anything else? Maybe you have an electrician come and retorque the connections once a year? It's not like they have a lot of moving parts assuming it's not doing anything fancy like sun-tracking.
  - throwaway5752 8y ago
    Have you owned a multi-kW inverter before? Because if you know one that is mostly free of drama I would love to know the brand! Solar photovoltaic systems are not as maintenance free as one might wish. They still make a ton of financial sense if you own them outright, but inverters and critter damage to wiring can be unwelcome surprise costs.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - secabeen 8y ago
      I have an Aurora PVI-6000-OUTD-US that's been pretty solid. I've also heard good things about the Sunny-Boy inverters. One thing I like about my Aurora is that there is a linux command-line tool that can pull data from the inverter over serial. I pull data from mine every 5 minutes into text files on my home server.
      - throwaway5752 8y ago
        Thank you. I have a SolarEdge currently... after two bad units (to their credit, under warranty) the third has been solid for a long time. I have heard mixed things about microinverters, and my installation has developed partial shading over time (damn trees!) so that's something else I've looked at.
    - Nanzikambe 8y ago
      Victron's Multiplus and Quattro are drama free. I buried and conduited/sealed all my cabling and had zero issues. Added bonus: if you use them with a CCGX and are comfortable with MQQT and/or Python there is literally nothing you can't control, automate or visualise with them. The CCGX itself is arm + linux and mostly open sourced https://www.victronenergy.com/live/open_source:start https://www.victronenergy.com/live/open_source:start The downsides are: 1) price but imho you get what you pay for many times over. 2) veconfigure for the multiplus itself is windows only, but runs fine in Wine on Linux and Mac
    - lakisy 8y ago
      We bought our solar panels from Solar Edge.It's a 4.5-5 KW system We are in our forth year. I've done nothing to it, no maintenance. It just works. Every now and then it rains and that cleans up the panels enough.
  - eyko 8y ago
    It'll probably also increase the cost of your home insurance. I'm not from the USA, but over here, accidents and acts of nature (e.g. a serious hailstorm) can damage your solar panels to the point they need replacing. If you bought them yourself, you usually add them to your home insurance, or purchase separate insurance just for the solar installation (which includes not just the panels). Sometimes, getting it on a lease contract works out much cheaper, but the situation could be different in the USA -- for starters, as the article mentions, solar is quite subsidized in other countries (although in my case, I'm speaking about Europe), and startups / small businesses that deal with solar are also subsidized (except Spain, which recently changed in unpopular ways which I don't completely understand, yet). That creates a situation where companies that "lease" tend to try to be competitive with the already subsidized market. It sometimes turns out to be slightly more expensive, but the hassle-free nature of having "pros" maintain your installation and ask very few questions tends to be something people are interested in. As an anecdote: a friend was doing some building work in his house and managed to damage a panel. They were replaced at no charge in less than a week. I was surprised because it was clearly his fault, but I guess they also want to keep their customers happy. Almost made me consider going with them if I bought my home.
  - sys_64738 8y ago
    You've got the weight of the things bolted to your roof. Is your roof new or less than new and needing replaced before the solar panels are paid for? Do you know a roofer who will touch solar panels during a re-roof? This doesn't even discuss the installer incompetence and the damage they'll do to your roof during install. Those panels are bolted to the roof and bolts cut through shingles and the sheathing underneath. All entry points for water. Bolting solar panels to the roof is not viable in the long run, IMO. The damage and the advancement of tech means these things will be obsolete in the near term.
    - m4x 8y ago
      What do you see obsoleting solar panels in the near term?
      - sys_64738 8y ago
        Solar shingles is where it's eventually gonna end up on cost and beauty, IMO.
      - gilnaa 8y ago
        Roof-installed consumer-grade nuclear reactors
    - lightedman 8y ago
      "Bolting solar panels to the roof is not viable in the long run, IMO. The damage and the advancement of tech means these things will be obsolete in the near term" I work in Solar. Your efficiency gains on single-junction monocrystalline cells are on the order of one percent per half decade. Damage to bolting to a roof? Not very much at all if you actually use the included sealing gaskets instead of bolting it straight in like most idiot installers, and the framing, done right, actually adds rigidity to your roof frame.
  - jsight 8y ago
    Unfortunately inverters fail, including the little microinverters (or optimizers with something like solaredge) on the panels themselves. This requires a qualified person to repair and possibly roof access as well. Depending on which panel it is, they may have to temporarily remove multiple panels to get to it. If the cost of labor is on the consumer, this can wipe out months of returns in a single visit. Of course, it isn't required to offer a lease in order to also offer a warranty, which is the real solution here.
    - apendleton 8y ago
      This is a risk with Sunrun too, though, and the risk that it will happen is undoubtedly factored into what they charge.
      - jsight 8y ago
        That is true, but I've still occasionally seen people misunderstand it. Some feel like the company is more obligated to respond in a lease deal. To be clear, I don't think that is true and I really don't think very many people should actually agree to lease deals. They are almost always bad for the consumer.
    - secabeen 8y ago
      Yeah. Most inverters have multiple-year warranties, and often offer extended warranties out to about 10 years for the non-micro string inverters. You should still expect a full inverter upgrade/replacement every 10 years.
  - octorian 8y ago
    I have a system from SolarCity that also came with my home when I bought it. This past year was finally the point where "buying it out" was possible, but I procrastinated. In retrospect, it's actually a good thing I did. My panels turned out to have a manufacturing defect, and now all need to be replaced. Because of the arrangement, SolarCity is doing it for me. That being said, their monthly cost is fixed so it's more a philosophical issue for me. I may still just buy it outright someday, especially if I want to expand it.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I don't remember the details, but whenever a solar company reaches out to me they list all the maintenance they will perform on the panels (a not insignificant list), and that they will charge for it if I buy it instead of lease. And that's where I tell them they just convinced me not to get solar. Where I live, every few years I get roof damage due to weather. These would be covered with a lease, but not with a purchase. Then there are things they don't cover at all. My roof will need to be replaced in the next few years. They said that they'll remove all the panels and reinstall them for a fee (even with a lease). When asked for the amount of the fee, they usually give me a range ("it depends on each situation"). The problem is that fee wipes out quite a lot of the savings. My electricity bill is only about $60 at the moment. With their lease plans, I'll save perhaps only $10/month. A fee of a few hundred dollars wipes out years of savings. I don't honestly know if maintenance will be a problem in reality. I just know that I can't trust them to let me know what kind of maintenance is involved.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > I don't remember the details, but whenever a solar company reaches out to me they list all the maintenance they will perform on the panels (a not insignificant list), and that they will charge for it if I buy it instead of lease That's because they want you to lease, not buy (and not just “lease in preference to buying”), because of their business model (and quite possibly sales agent incentives that exaggerate preferences in the actual business model.) Sort of like how (well, before most of them went belly up because of internet competition), brick and mortar chain computer store sales staff would prefer driving off a sale to making one without an extended warranty.
  - Hankenstein2 8y ago
    I had solar panels for 13 years that I bought up front. Never cleaned them, never had to do anything. We had 1 cataclysmic hail storm (Colorado) that destroyed our roof but the panels had zero damage. We had to pay $5000 to get the panels off to fix the roof but the insurance paid for it. We also paid no extra insurance for the panels. One of the best decisions we ever made. We just recently sold the house and it is true the panels gave no extra bump to the sales price but the new owners are ecstatic which is also a warm fuzzy.
  - URSpider94 8y ago
    It’s risk. You put in a $25k system, then the inverter blows and it’s useless to you until you spend $3k for a new one. That does happen, probably a few percent per year chance. If you don’t have $3k lying around, then you are one failure away from effectively losing $25k.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Do these solar panel leasing companies include maintenance in the contract? Do they have guys going around to all of the installs to work on them? I'd always assumed that you would be responsible for all of the maintenance in either case, because that's usually how it works.
  - URSpider94 8y ago
    They include maintenance in the lease contract. Also, they are closely monitoring the output and will probably notice before you do if there’s a problem.
- rconti 8y ago
  Maintenance? I bought solar from a company in San Jose. They guarantee production, they warrantee the installation to be leak-proof, the panels and inverter have factory warrantees. I guess they won't come over and wash my panels for me, but, no kidding.
  - yumraj 8y ago
    Which company did you buy from? Which panels are they using? LG, Panasonic, Chinese? I may be in the market soon..
    - rconti 8y ago
      I went with Clean Solar in San Jose. All companies I got quotes from were very similar; I wanted to go with a small/local company, but the smallest company I talked with turned out to be shady/on the verge of criminal, and for me, Clean Solar struck the right balance of being local and big enough to have tons of great reviews and presumably good financial resources, but not huge. The SunRun guy I talked to was also great but I just didn't get the greatest feel in the end. In my particular case, I got SunPower panels, but (like most installers), you can get whatever you want. I went back and forth and was on the verge of going with 360w LG NeON panels but then a deal came up on SunPower 345s that were substantially cheaper per watt, getting close to non-premium brands (of course with that slight wattage discount; I suspect they're older panels being phased out in favor of new 360s as the top end). I had liked the idea of using SunPower but the 360s were even more expensive than the already-premium LG 360s, and the 345s at a substantial discount were just the ticket. Feel free to ping me if you like, I was super happy with my sales guy who was far more patient with me and spent far more time on the phone with me than I think most people would, and the install was done in one day, they arrived early and finished early, and left the place spotless. Can't say it wouldn't have been the same case with anyone else, but I was still impressed. It's pretty cool how they do the quoting and measurements; get up on your roof and use specialized cameras to 'view' the sky from all corners, find obstructions, calculate sun angles, etc. They gave me an estimate of per-month production that's been amazingly accurate. (the guaranteed production is on a per-year basis with production declining at a certain annual %)
- rconti 8y ago
  An interesting thing touched on in the article is that some folks' tax burdens are low enough that they can't get the full credit anyway -- or at least not in the first year. It sounds like you can take it over a multiple years, but suddenly the minimal up-front price of a lease scheme might make sense versus fronting a ton of money today, and taking your tax credit over years.
woah 8y ago
That’s because government subsidies always have to be twisted into the shape of a tax cut to avoid triggering low information voters.
- tomp 8y ago
  Huh? Electric car subsidies were just that, subsidies (i.e. Tesla cars were cheaper).
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    No they were still structured as tax credits. https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicles-tax-credits-and-other-incentives https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicl...
    - tomp 8y ago
      Ah, interesting, I never realized!
  - WhompingWindows 8y ago
    How are you defining subsidy? Tesla cars were not cheaper at the price level, a buyer in 2018 and before just gets a tax credit of $7,500 upon tax filing.
    - tomp 8y ago
      Ah, interesting, I never realized!
cptskippy 8y ago
> Essentially it sounds like Sunrun's investors are paying to install solar panels on your house so they can claim the tax credit to offset their own income. They're probably also factoring those arrays into their green initiatives by claiming those green credits to offset their own consumption.
ballenf 8y ago
Do the calculations include the opportunity cost of the initial money? I.e., what return would the homeowner get on the investment in the market? Market returns are quite low, but could still swing the recommendation toward lease over purchase.
- shados 8y ago
  When I ran the numbers for my home back in the days, it more or less came out to a pessimistic 15%/year investment (give or take, it's been a while and memory is shaky. Your millage may vary depending on your power costs). You might be able to do better through other vehicles, but I was planning on using it to diversify my portfolio, so to speak.
michaelt 8y ago
You're better off buying the system up front if possible When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was 10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to the value of the house. Buying is all very well if you're sure to stay in the same place for 10+ years - but if you move in that time, better hope you place a high value on feeling you've helped the environment. Not that having a mandatory loan you try to get prospective buyers to pay for is a better decision, of course...
- sys_64738 8y ago
  > When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was 10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to the value of the house. Solar panels in this type of deal are debt incurred by the home owner so the cost should be deducted from the sale price. In other words, do not buy a house with mortgaged solar panels.
  - oarsinsync 8y ago
    I think you've misunderstood. GP is talking about time to break-even on purchase, and that despite having purchased outright, the panels being worthless as far as house-valuation metrics went
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Depends on the tax breaks in the UK the government effectively guaranteed a 8% ROI for decades at one point. On some sunny winter days we turn off central heating and use the free electricity.
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was 10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to the value of the house. If that's true, then your strategy should be to buy a house with solar already installed and paid for. You'd get the house at regular prices, but pay much less for electricity.
- 8y ago
rconti 8y ago
There's clearly not much benefit, if they sold him on saving a mere $23 per month.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  Eh, it's $23 a month with no capital cost to you and environmental feels. You just sign a paper and move on with your life.
floatrock 8y ago
When Sunrun got started, no one wanted to issue loans for residential solar. It was a new unproven technology, and the accounting departments at places big enough to provide these kinds of loans at scale just didn't know how to factor the risk. The article calls these TPO's, but in the industry the more common term is PPA's -- Power Purchase Agreements. That's more how large solar farms work -- they find a buyer willing to pay a fixed price over 20 years and use that contract to raise money in the capital markets. Sunrun kinda took that model and applied it residential, because that's what the financial industry that could supply the capital knew. Now that we're a few more years into this grand energy transition, PPA's are falling out of favor. Now that the capital markets see this home solar thing is more or less as reliable as promised, has expected depreciation, etc., personal loans are becoming the more common way of buying home solar.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  What kind of rates and from which lenders are you seeing on solar loans in 2019? Thinking of it in the next 10 years, wondering about the specifics of cost in the Boston area.
watmough 8y ago
Yep! We had something similar show up in my Houston suburb. I read the gist of it and tossed it in the trash. If I want solar panels, I will pay outright, or borrow as needed to install the system. Why in the heck should I enter into a contract to park someone else's assets onto my own property, to pay for the privilege, and to risk a massive penalty to get out of the contract, a penalty likely linked to an inflated valuation on aging panels, and on expensive installation carried out by someone with every incentive to maximize the cost. Hahahahaahahaha! No thanks!
URSpider94 8y ago
The benefit to the homeowner is defined cost and no up-front payment, which is a big benefit to most people. When you say you can buy the system with credit, you assume that the buyer can get a loan for the $15k cost of putting the system in - for many people, that’s not easy. Additionally, if you buy a solar system and anything breaks, you are on the hook for the repair cost. Also keep in mind that these are people with very, very low electric bills - a small home in a Mediterranean climate, no need for either heat or A/C. Solar is really overkill for them. For a family with a bigger house and higher electricity usage (maybe an EV in the driveway?) there would be plenty of room for both Sunrun and the homeowner to come out ahead.

by imgabe 8y ago

BeetleB 8y ago

>You're better off buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the tax credit yourself. Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. As for the tax credit, you do get it in the form of a discounted price. Over here, that's how all the solar companies pitch it. They'll install it for cheap, but the condition is that you pay them a big fraction of the tax credit the following 2 years. They make it clear that the reason they're giving you the panels at below market cost is so that you can pay them in tax credits that you file for and receive.

imgabe 8y ago
> Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. Ok? That is standard practice when you own a home. You are responsible for all the maintenance on your home. What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I assume they have to be cleaned every so often. Anything else? Maybe you have an electrician come and retorque the connections once a year? It's not like they have a lot of moving parts assuming it's not doing anything fancy like sun-tracking.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  Have you owned a multi-kW inverter before? Because if you know one that is mostly free of drama I would love to know the brand! Solar photovoltaic systems are not as maintenance free as one might wish. They still make a ton of financial sense if you own them outright, but inverters and critter damage to wiring can be unwelcome surprise costs.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - secabeen 8y ago
    I have an Aurora PVI-6000-OUTD-US that's been pretty solid. I've also heard good things about the Sunny-Boy inverters. One thing I like about my Aurora is that there is a linux command-line tool that can pull data from the inverter over serial. I pull data from mine every 5 minutes into text files on my home server.
    - throwaway5752 8y ago
      Thank you. I have a SolarEdge currently... after two bad units (to their credit, under warranty) the third has been solid for a long time. I have heard mixed things about microinverters, and my installation has developed partial shading over time (damn trees!) so that's something else I've looked at.
  - Nanzikambe 8y ago
    Victron's Multiplus and Quattro are drama free. I buried and conduited/sealed all my cabling and had zero issues. Added bonus: if you use them with a CCGX and are comfortable with MQQT and/or Python there is literally nothing you can't control, automate or visualise with them. The CCGX itself is arm + linux and mostly open sourced https://www.victronenergy.com/live/open_source:start https://www.victronenergy.com/live/open_source:start The downsides are: 1) price but imho you get what you pay for many times over. 2) veconfigure for the multiplus itself is windows only, but runs fine in Wine on Linux and Mac
  - lakisy 8y ago
    We bought our solar panels from Solar Edge.It's a 4.5-5 KW system We are in our forth year. I've done nothing to it, no maintenance. It just works. Every now and then it rains and that cleans up the panels enough.
- eyko 8y ago
  It'll probably also increase the cost of your home insurance. I'm not from the USA, but over here, accidents and acts of nature (e.g. a serious hailstorm) can damage your solar panels to the point they need replacing. If you bought them yourself, you usually add them to your home insurance, or purchase separate insurance just for the solar installation (which includes not just the panels). Sometimes, getting it on a lease contract works out much cheaper, but the situation could be different in the USA -- for starters, as the article mentions, solar is quite subsidized in other countries (although in my case, I'm speaking about Europe), and startups / small businesses that deal with solar are also subsidized (except Spain, which recently changed in unpopular ways which I don't completely understand, yet). That creates a situation where companies that "lease" tend to try to be competitive with the already subsidized market. It sometimes turns out to be slightly more expensive, but the hassle-free nature of having "pros" maintain your installation and ask very few questions tends to be something people are interested in. As an anecdote: a friend was doing some building work in his house and managed to damage a panel. They were replaced at no charge in less than a week. I was surprised because it was clearly his fault, but I guess they also want to keep their customers happy. Almost made me consider going with them if I bought my home.
- sys_64738 8y ago
  You've got the weight of the things bolted to your roof. Is your roof new or less than new and needing replaced before the solar panels are paid for? Do you know a roofer who will touch solar panels during a re-roof? This doesn't even discuss the installer incompetence and the damage they'll do to your roof during install. Those panels are bolted to the roof and bolts cut through shingles and the sheathing underneath. All entry points for water. Bolting solar panels to the roof is not viable in the long run, IMO. The damage and the advancement of tech means these things will be obsolete in the near term.
  - m4x 8y ago
    What do you see obsoleting solar panels in the near term?
    - sys_64738 8y ago
      Solar shingles is where it's eventually gonna end up on cost and beauty, IMO.
    - gilnaa 8y ago
      Roof-installed consumer-grade nuclear reactors
  - lightedman 8y ago
    "Bolting solar panels to the roof is not viable in the long run, IMO. The damage and the advancement of tech means these things will be obsolete in the near term" I work in Solar. Your efficiency gains on single-junction monocrystalline cells are on the order of one percent per half decade. Damage to bolting to a roof? Not very much at all if you actually use the included sealing gaskets instead of bolting it straight in like most idiot installers, and the framing, done right, actually adds rigidity to your roof frame.
- jsight 8y ago
  Unfortunately inverters fail, including the little microinverters (or optimizers with something like solaredge) on the panels themselves. This requires a qualified person to repair and possibly roof access as well. Depending on which panel it is, they may have to temporarily remove multiple panels to get to it. If the cost of labor is on the consumer, this can wipe out months of returns in a single visit. Of course, it isn't required to offer a lease in order to also offer a warranty, which is the real solution here.
  - apendleton 8y ago
    This is a risk with Sunrun too, though, and the risk that it will happen is undoubtedly factored into what they charge.
    - jsight 8y ago
      That is true, but I've still occasionally seen people misunderstand it. Some feel like the company is more obligated to respond in a lease deal. To be clear, I don't think that is true and I really don't think very many people should actually agree to lease deals. They are almost always bad for the consumer.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    Yeah. Most inverters have multiple-year warranties, and often offer extended warranties out to about 10 years for the non-micro string inverters. You should still expect a full inverter upgrade/replacement every 10 years.
- octorian 8y ago
  I have a system from SolarCity that also came with my home when I bought it. This past year was finally the point where "buying it out" was possible, but I procrastinated. In retrospect, it's actually a good thing I did. My panels turned out to have a manufacturing defect, and now all need to be replaced. Because of the arrangement, SolarCity is doing it for me. That being said, their monthly cost is fixed so it's more a philosophical issue for me. I may still just buy it outright someday, especially if I want to expand it.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I don't remember the details, but whenever a solar company reaches out to me they list all the maintenance they will perform on the panels (a not insignificant list), and that they will charge for it if I buy it instead of lease. And that's where I tell them they just convinced me not to get solar. Where I live, every few years I get roof damage due to weather. These would be covered with a lease, but not with a purchase. Then there are things they don't cover at all. My roof will need to be replaced in the next few years. They said that they'll remove all the panels and reinstall them for a fee (even with a lease). When asked for the amount of the fee, they usually give me a range ("it depends on each situation"). The problem is that fee wipes out quite a lot of the savings. My electricity bill is only about $60 at the moment. With their lease plans, I'll save perhaps only $10/month. A fee of a few hundred dollars wipes out years of savings. I don't honestly know if maintenance will be a problem in reality. I just know that I can't trust them to let me know what kind of maintenance is involved.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > I don't remember the details, but whenever a solar company reaches out to me they list all the maintenance they will perform on the panels (a not insignificant list), and that they will charge for it if I buy it instead of lease That's because they want you to lease, not buy (and not just “lease in preference to buying”), because of their business model (and quite possibly sales agent incentives that exaggerate preferences in the actual business model.) Sort of like how (well, before most of them went belly up because of internet competition), brick and mortar chain computer store sales staff would prefer driving off a sale to making one without an extended warranty.
- Hankenstein2 8y ago
  I had solar panels for 13 years that I bought up front. Never cleaned them, never had to do anything. We had 1 cataclysmic hail storm (Colorado) that destroyed our roof but the panels had zero damage. We had to pay $5000 to get the panels off to fix the roof but the insurance paid for it. We also paid no extra insurance for the panels. One of the best decisions we ever made. We just recently sold the house and it is true the panels gave no extra bump to the sales price but the new owners are ecstatic which is also a warm fuzzy.
- URSpider94 8y ago
  It’s risk. You put in a $25k system, then the inverter blows and it’s useless to you until you spend $3k for a new one. That does happen, probably a few percent per year chance. If you don’t have $3k lying around, then you are one failure away from effectively losing $25k.
jandrese 8y ago
Do these solar panel leasing companies include maintenance in the contract? Do they have guys going around to all of the installs to work on them? I'd always assumed that you would be responsible for all of the maintenance in either case, because that's usually how it works.
- URSpider94 8y ago
  They include maintenance in the lease contract. Also, they are closely monitoring the output and will probably notice before you do if there’s a problem.
rconti 8y ago
Maintenance? I bought solar from a company in San Jose. They guarantee production, they warrantee the installation to be leak-proof, the panels and inverter have factory warrantees. I guess they won't come over and wash my panels for me, but, no kidding.
- yumraj 8y ago
  Which company did you buy from? Which panels are they using? LG, Panasonic, Chinese? I may be in the market soon..
  - rconti 8y ago
    I went with Clean Solar in San Jose. All companies I got quotes from were very similar; I wanted to go with a small/local company, but the smallest company I talked with turned out to be shady/on the verge of criminal, and for me, Clean Solar struck the right balance of being local and big enough to have tons of great reviews and presumably good financial resources, but not huge. The SunRun guy I talked to was also great but I just didn't get the greatest feel in the end. In my particular case, I got SunPower panels, but (like most installers), you can get whatever you want. I went back and forth and was on the verge of going with 360w LG NeON panels but then a deal came up on SunPower 345s that were substantially cheaper per watt, getting close to non-premium brands (of course with that slight wattage discount; I suspect they're older panels being phased out in favor of new 360s as the top end). I had liked the idea of using SunPower but the 360s were even more expensive than the already-premium LG 360s, and the 345s at a substantial discount were just the ticket. Feel free to ping me if you like, I was super happy with my sales guy who was far more patient with me and spent far more time on the phone with me than I think most people would, and the install was done in one day, they arrived early and finished early, and left the place spotless. Can't say it wouldn't have been the same case with anyone else, but I was still impressed. It's pretty cool how they do the quoting and measurements; get up on your roof and use specialized cameras to 'view' the sky from all corners, find obstructions, calculate sun angles, etc. They gave me an estimate of per-month production that's been amazingly accurate. (the guaranteed production is on a per-year basis with production declining at a certain annual %)
rconti 8y ago
An interesting thing touched on in the article is that some folks' tax burdens are low enough that they can't get the full credit anyway -- or at least not in the first year. It sounds like you can take it over a multiple years, but suddenly the minimal up-front price of a lease scheme might make sense versus fronting a ton of money today, and taking your tax credit over years.

woah 8y ago

That’s because government subsidies always have to be twisted into the shape of a tax cut to avoid triggering low information voters.

tomp 8y ago
Huh? Electric car subsidies were just that, subsidies (i.e. Tesla cars were cheaper).
- rtkwe 8y ago
  No they were still structured as tax credits. https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicles-tax-credits-and-other-incentives https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicl...
  - tomp 8y ago
    Ah, interesting, I never realized!
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  How are you defining subsidy? Tesla cars were not cheaper at the price level, a buyer in 2018 and before just gets a tax credit of $7,500 upon tax filing.
  - tomp 8y ago
    Ah, interesting, I never realized!

cptskippy 8y ago

> Essentially it sounds like Sunrun's investors are paying to install solar panels on your house so they can claim the tax credit to offset their own income. They're probably also factoring those arrays into their green initiatives by claiming those green credits to offset their own consumption.

ballenf 8y ago

Do the calculations include the opportunity cost of the initial money? I.e., what return would the homeowner get on the investment in the market? Market returns are quite low, but could still swing the recommendation toward lease over purchase.

shados 8y ago
When I ran the numbers for my home back in the days, it more or less came out to a pessimistic 15%/year investment (give or take, it's been a while and memory is shaky. Your millage may vary depending on your power costs). You might be able to do better through other vehicles, but I was planning on using it to diversify my portfolio, so to speak.

michaelt 8y ago

You're better off buying the system up front if possible When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was 10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to the value of the house. Buying is all very well if you're sure to stay in the same place for 10+ years - but if you move in that time, better hope you place a high value on feeling you've helped the environment. Not that having a mandatory loan you try to get prospective buyers to pay for is a better decision, of course...

sys_64738 8y ago
> When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was 10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to the value of the house. Solar panels in this type of deal are debt incurred by the home owner so the cost should be deducted from the sale price. In other words, do not buy a house with mortgaged solar panels.
- oarsinsync 8y ago
  I think you've misunderstood. GP is talking about time to break-even on purchase, and that despite having purchased outright, the panels being worthless as far as house-valuation metrics went
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Depends on the tax breaks in the UK the government effectively guaranteed a 8% ROI for decades at one point. On some sunny winter days we turn off central heating and use the free electricity.
phkahler 8y ago
>> When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was 10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to the value of the house. If that's true, then your strategy should be to buy a house with solar already installed and paid for. You'd get the house at regular prices, but pay much less for electricity.
8y ago

rconti 8y ago

There's clearly not much benefit, if they sold him on saving a mere $23 per month.

saalweachter 8y ago
Eh, it's $23 a month with no capital cost to you and environmental feels. You just sign a paper and move on with your life.

floatrock 8y ago

When Sunrun got started, no one wanted to issue loans for residential solar. It was a new unproven technology, and the accounting departments at places big enough to provide these kinds of loans at scale just didn't know how to factor the risk. The article calls these TPO's, but in the industry the more common term is PPA's -- Power Purchase Agreements. That's more how large solar farms work -- they find a buyer willing to pay a fixed price over 20 years and use that contract to raise money in the capital markets. Sunrun kinda took that model and applied it residential, because that's what the financial industry that could supply the capital knew. Now that we're a few more years into this grand energy transition, PPA's are falling out of favor. Now that the capital markets see this home solar thing is more or less as reliable as promised, has expected depreciation, etc., personal loans are becoming the more common way of buying home solar.

WhompingWindows 8y ago
What kind of rates and from which lenders are you seeing on solar loans in 2019? Thinking of it in the next 10 years, wondering about the specifics of cost in the Boston area.

watmough 8y ago

Yep! We had something similar show up in my Houston suburb. I read the gist of it and tossed it in the trash. If I want solar panels, I will pay outright, or borrow as needed to install the system. Why in the heck should I enter into a contract to park someone else's assets onto my own property, to pay for the privilege, and to risk a massive penalty to get out of the contract, a penalty likely linked to an inflated valuation on aging panels, and on expensive installation carried out by someone with every incentive to maximize the cost. Hahahahaahahaha! No thanks!

URSpider94 8y ago

The benefit to the homeowner is defined cost and no up-front payment, which is a big benefit to most people. When you say you can buy the system with credit, you assume that the buyer can get a loan for the $15k cost of putting the system in - for many people, that’s not easy. Additionally, if you buy a solar system and anything breaks, you are on the hook for the repair cost. Also keep in mind that these are people with very, very low electric bills - a small home in a Mediterranean climate, no need for either heat or A/C. Solar is really overkill for them. For a family with a bigger house and higher electricity usage (maybe an EV in the driveway?) there would be plenty of room for both Sunrun and the homeowner to come out ahead.