5 ms·

Not just a 20 year contract, but a 20 year contract that holds a lien on your home. This lien is great for sunrun. It has near zero risk profit backed by a lie

Not just a 20 year contract, but a 20 year contract that holds a lien on your home. This lien is great for sunrun. It has near zero risk profit backed by a lien on a home. The financial engineering at the expense of the public is quite good.

jrnichols 8y ago
It's terrifying that California legalized this in such a fashion and seems to have handed companies like Sunrun a huge victory.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  And again and again, @AOC is completely correct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNjckHXBNBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNjckHXBNBI There's no laws federally preventing corporate collusion and corruption regarding federal congress. And I would also make the claim it's also true for states as well. This Sunrun contract they peddle isn't good for anyone, except for their wallet books. Just how many homes will have unattachable liens from this debauchery?
  - dmix 8y ago
    People like AOC love pushing these types of these well-intentioned top-down gov economic engineering policies which claim to help the little guy (or the environment in this case) but ultimately either do the opposite and largely just create inefficient systems, promoting graft and cronyism, and generally making us worse-off than before. Often they work for a short period of time before the entire marketplace figures out how to exploit it or work around it. Rinse and Repeat. Despite constant evidence that it continually fails to do what they claimed and keeps profiting large politically connect companies, at what point to we start rejecting the whole concept in the first place? Are we continually supposed to believe the next time will be better? The next politician will be more honest and competent? The next batch of over-committed way-too-late patch work of policy with fix the thousand leaks of the boat which they largely generated in the first place?
    - munk-a 8y ago
      As per the gp > There's no laws federally preventing corporate collusion and corruption regarding federal congress. And I would also make the claim it's also true for states as well. This is where the graft and cronyism comes from, and not just for liberal "over-reaching government" policies - graft and cronyism also infect regulations to enforce monopolies by people trying to downscale government protections, and they infect the removal of some regulations that industries consider too onerous but which benefit society at large. The issue in the US right now is that graft & cronyism are so deeply embedded into the government that we may not legitimately be able to get them out, but I'd urge caution whenever you're tempted to pre-judge people who want to make large changes as doing so for personal gain.
      - dmix 8y ago
        If you read the article closely SunRun entire business model is built off of buying up thousands of tax credits intended for regular America and selling them to mega-corps so they pay zero taxes. And in return it's thousands of loans directly tied to properties by selling short-term gains to consumer who eventually get burned by long term financial trickery. I mostly agree with you but giant gov programs in 2019 are just setting you up for failure. This isn't patriotic post-war 1950s American in boom times ready to get to work. There is a sophisticated highly competent industry set up around poking and prodding these deals inside and outside of government. Private/public deals are cancer. Well intention gov mega-deals like California's massive tax credits and new solar-policy, etc, etc, etc are just bad ideas that keep working against the public interest while politicians get praised as helping the poor/middle class when it gets first released. There's no accountability afterwards. They tell us it's just a lack of gov interferring, which will solve all the problems they made. Let markets do what markets do and only come in to regulate when there is a clear and obvious dynamic where markets simply dont work (military, police, health care, etc). Simply the tax code. Simplify spending. Stop pretending these grand social and economic experiments. Stop public/private nonsense and choose one or the other.
fbonetti 8y ago
Without a lien on the property this type of business model, where the company pays for tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment up front to private individuals who may not have any other assets to be used as collateral, simply wouldn’t work. It’s not that different from a mortgage.
- the8472 8y ago
  Except that they would still have the solar panels and the power generated by them to sell as assets.
eloisant 8y ago
A better system would be to offer buyout of the panels when the house sells. For example if they decide that the system needs to be bought for 20k when the house gets sold, then when you want to sell your house you just bump the price 20k to account for the panels buyout. There, no lien to the home, and no confusion from the buyers thinking they get a house with solar panels when they're just getting a house where somebody else's panels are installed.

jrnichols 8y ago

It's terrifying that California legalized this in such a fashion and seems to have handed companies like Sunrun a huge victory.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
And again and again, @AOC is completely correct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNjckHXBNBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNjckHXBNBI There's no laws federally preventing corporate collusion and corruption regarding federal congress. And I would also make the claim it's also true for states as well. This Sunrun contract they peddle isn't good for anyone, except for their wallet books. Just how many homes will have unattachable liens from this debauchery?
- dmix 8y ago
  People like AOC love pushing these types of these well-intentioned top-down gov economic engineering policies which claim to help the little guy (or the environment in this case) but ultimately either do the opposite and largely just create inefficient systems, promoting graft and cronyism, and generally making us worse-off than before. Often they work for a short period of time before the entire marketplace figures out how to exploit it or work around it. Rinse and Repeat. Despite constant evidence that it continually fails to do what they claimed and keeps profiting large politically connect companies, at what point to we start rejecting the whole concept in the first place? Are we continually supposed to believe the next time will be better? The next politician will be more honest and competent? The next batch of over-committed way-too-late patch work of policy with fix the thousand leaks of the boat which they largely generated in the first place?
  - munk-a 8y ago
    As per the gp > There's no laws federally preventing corporate collusion and corruption regarding federal congress. And I would also make the claim it's also true for states as well. This is where the graft and cronyism comes from, and not just for liberal "over-reaching government" policies - graft and cronyism also infect regulations to enforce monopolies by people trying to downscale government protections, and they infect the removal of some regulations that industries consider too onerous but which benefit society at large. The issue in the US right now is that graft & cronyism are so deeply embedded into the government that we may not legitimately be able to get them out, but I'd urge caution whenever you're tempted to pre-judge people who want to make large changes as doing so for personal gain.
    - dmix 8y ago
      If you read the article closely SunRun entire business model is built off of buying up thousands of tax credits intended for regular America and selling them to mega-corps so they pay zero taxes. And in return it's thousands of loans directly tied to properties by selling short-term gains to consumer who eventually get burned by long term financial trickery. I mostly agree with you but giant gov programs in 2019 are just setting you up for failure. This isn't patriotic post-war 1950s American in boom times ready to get to work. There is a sophisticated highly competent industry set up around poking and prodding these deals inside and outside of government. Private/public deals are cancer. Well intention gov mega-deals like California's massive tax credits and new solar-policy, etc, etc, etc are just bad ideas that keep working against the public interest while politicians get praised as helping the poor/middle class when it gets first released. There's no accountability afterwards. They tell us it's just a lack of gov interferring, which will solve all the problems they made. Let markets do what markets do and only come in to regulate when there is a clear and obvious dynamic where markets simply dont work (military, police, health care, etc). Simply the tax code. Simplify spending. Stop pretending these grand social and economic experiments. Stop public/private nonsense and choose one or the other.

fbonetti 8y ago

Without a lien on the property this type of business model, where the company pays for tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment up front to private individuals who may not have any other assets to be used as collateral, simply wouldn’t work. It’s not that different from a mortgage.

the8472 8y ago
Except that they would still have the solar panels and the power generated by them to sell as assets.

eloisant 8y ago

A better system would be to offer buyout of the panels when the house sells. For example if they decide that the system needs to be bought for 20k when the house gets sold, then when you want to sell your house you just bump the price 20k to account for the panels buyout. There, no lien to the home, and no confusion from the buyers thinking they get a house with solar panels when they're just getting a house where somebody else's panels are installed.