The tax credit thing as designed by legislation is nutty. It lets companies buy your tax credit and use it to offset their own income. Leading to all this zero

The tax credit thing as designed by legislation is nutty. It lets companies buy your tax credit and use it to offset their own income. Leading to all this zero value financial engineering. But from a homeowner's point of view and Sunrun's point of view it makes sense. Lots of people might not be able use the tax credit because they already owe have low income tax (moderate income + mortgage interest deduction, or retired with a nice nest egg will get you to very low income tax). (If you pay enough income tax to use the credit you should just get a loan and avoid this.) This was legislated poorly, probably in order to call it a "tax credit" instead of "subsidy". A subsidy would be much cleaner, have the same economics and they should just do it that way. This whole mess and industry was created just for this one talking point. The government giving you $2000 off an installation is the same as getting a $2000 tax credit from the Treasury's point of view. Sunrun sounds like not the best business to be involved with. Like "new buyer doesn't want the system" is an obvious thing for the customer service manual. (Referring to "...prepay the lease and leave the hardware ... I’ve been kicking myself ever since I learned about this latter option. It would have saved the estate around $12,000"). Also they are clearly selling this to a bunch of people who could easily use the tax credit and could easily get a homeowner's loan. Super dodgy. I'll bet a lot of the sales nonsense is to hide this fact.