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I bought a house with solar panels 6 years ago. There was an ethernet cable plugged into the inverter panel, which ran to a Comcast box. We switched to FIOS a
by jawns 4y ago
I bought a house with solar panels 6 years ago.
There was an ethernet cable plugged into the inverter panel, which ran to a Comcast box.
We switched to FIOS after a couple of months, and never switched the connectivity of the solar panels. Everything worked fine, but ...
A few months later, I received a strongly worded email from an organization I had never heard of, saying that I needed to get the solar panels back online, because it was a requirement of the contract the previous owner had entered into to sell the SRECs generated by the panels. Failing to connect the panels to the Internet could lead them to pursue action related to a lien they had on our property.
Wait, what contract? And what lien? This was the first I'd heard of either, and the lien hadn't come up during the title-insurance process.
It turns out the previous owner of the house had entered into a contract with an organization in our state that pays you a lump sum, if you sign away the rights to the SRECs your system generates. The owner had used that lump sum to help pay for the panels.
But then he sold the house to my wife and me, without ever disclosing the existence of the contract. So basically he sold the SRECs to both of us. He sold them to the organization by virtue of their contract, and he sold them to us, by virtue of the ownership of the panels transferring to us when we bought the house.
And the lien never came up because it was not against the real estate itself; rather, it was against the SRECs -- the Solar Renewable Energy Credits that are generated by the panels. They're not physical assets, but they do have substantial value.
It took the retention of a lawyer and a whole bunch of back-and-forth between us, the seller, our buyer and seller's agents, the lawyer who handled our settlement, and the SREC-buying organization to get the whole mess sorted out.
In the end, we got the lien and contract dissolved ... and then we hooked the panels up to FIOS, and I get handy little charts of all the SRECs we're generating :)
- don-code 4y agoAre you still able to sell your SRECs with the system disconnected, or are you foregoing that as a cost of being offline? I'd probably lose out on $500 per year from my system if I didn't sell them. At this point, though, it might _actually_ be asking the question of how much I value my privacy.
- tinco 4y agoIf you sell your SRECs you're basically undoing any potential climate good your solar panel might be doing.
- verelo 4y agoInteresting - can you elaborate on this?
- bombcar 4y agoThe idea is that you're selling your SRECs to someone (say a coal-powered bitcoin miner) so they can offset the pollution they're doing and not have to build their own controls. The argument is that if you did NOT sell, they would have to solve the problem some other way. Just like if Tesla didn't sell electric vehicle credits to other manufacturers, those companies would have to find other solutions to comply.
- 1123581321 4y agoSREC mandates are used to achieve a percentage of renewable generation, not an emissions quantity.
- bombcar 4y agoIt works out the same, someone doesn't have to build solar that would otherwise have to if the homeowners give them their credits.
- 1123581321 4y agoYes, the end result is that energy generated in the state is sufficiently renewable per the government mandate, with homes contributing to it where it makes more financial sense than building greenfield solar or wind. In states where total demand is falling, conventional fuel plants are also likely able to be closed.
- bushbaba 4y agoHow can one sell their SRECs though? News to me. Have panels but never got credits for the SRECs. I do have net metering enabled.
- 1123581321 4y agoSeveral states have programs that buy them at a price high enough to defray installation costs, to encourage adoption of solar. Part of the installer’s job is to do that paperwork for you, so you’d know if you had that option. You can also sell them to other states if you set up with a marketplace, typically SRECTrade. However, the fees and low sale price are prohibitive if you’re not in a state that statutorily buys them for a higher amount
- superjan 4y agoThis depends per country. But be aware that if you sell them, the buyer buys the right to generate electricity using fossil fuel, and sell them as if they are green/renewable. If your intent is to accelerate the transition to renewables, you should not sell them.
- ethbr0 4y agoSo, the solar panels conveyed with the house (as physical property), but the contracts covering them were never (re-)agreed to by you? And the lien wasn't against the physical solar panels? I'd be curious how the state organization thought they had cause to pursue you? How is that not the seller not lying about property (they didn't own the panels free and clear) and thus liable for effectively selling stolen property? In which case, state organization would be free to sue the seller, and you have no part in the proceedings. What laws did it end up turning on?
- bombcar 4y agoMy guess is title companies haven't caught up to this - they've never had unreal/intangible property associated with real estate before.
- ethbr0 4y agoMineral rights? But that's probably specialized to certain parts of the US (upper midwest, southwest, NE Appalachia). And water rights, but mostly a west-of-the-Mississippi thing?
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, those would be things they might know about, but mineral rights usually DON'T convey (in some places they do) and water rights is usually a farmland thing. I daresay this title company will now be on the lookout for things like this!
- HideousKojima 4y agoWater rights are very common for residential properties here in Utah. I currently live in a townhome, but several of the homes I had looked at had X "shares" of water from the reservoir in the mountains a few miles away.
- tkojames 4y agoYou would think hopefully that having title insurance. That the title company would need to do everything for hopefully no out of pocket cost.
- bmitc 4y agoDid it end up costing you money to get that resolved? It drives me crazy that with housing contracts, they protect essentially everyone except the buyer. It's never anyone else's problem because of the contract somehow covering them (lawyers, agents, sellers, etc.), but somehow, the language never quite covers buyers. We purchased a house, and within just days, the basement flooded because cleaning wipes were flushed down the toilet by the prior owner, clogging the system. So the sellers knew about the flooding or they flushed the stuff while moving out. It wasn't covered under any clause by interpretation, although it should have been by literal reading of the contract. Seller's can basically do whatever they want besides burn the house down.
- disillusioned 4y agoWe have a solar loan that we procured for our system. We're entitled to 100% of the generation, it's just a simple loan for the $40k system cost itself. But when we went to refinance, it was a pain in the ass explaining to the lender (Chase) that the loan has a lien against the SOLAR SYSTEM itself, and NOT the property. It shows up as a "second mortgage" in many systems, but it is EXPRESSLY NOT secured by the underlying physical HOUSE, just the solar panels and inverters themselves. We finally were able to get the lender to waive their positioning on the lien to clear the way for the refi, which was nice, but it was a _process_.
- sizzle 4y agoSomething similar happened to me with solar city power purchase plan or something before they got bought out by Tesla