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I Bought a House with Solar Panels

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Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#21

Post by BeetleB »

imgabe wrote: post #13

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 buyin…

>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.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#22

Post by zeroonetwothree »

I bought a house in CA a few years ago and had to assume the previous owner’s SunRun lease. I didn’t really want to but even if it ends up costing me slightly more in the long term (for now it’s unclear) it’s very minor in the land of $1.5 million housing. This article seems to be making a huge deal over a minor $30/month cost.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#23

Post by imgabe »

BeetleB wrote: post #21
imgabe wrote: post #13

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 buyin…

>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 foll…

> 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.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#24

Post by ocdtrekkie »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #18
CompelTechnic wrote: post #2

>Supporting renewable energy is important, and I get spending a little more to help the planet. But a for-profit company like Sunrun wasn’t my idea of the right place to do it. That's a pretty strange sentiment. 20 years ago, solar was decidedly more expensive than it is now. A fair price would be higher than grid power. For the installation to have occurred at all, the up front capital cost had to be amortized by a…

Seems like one thing to make the payment schedule back-heavy and be honest about it, another thing to use unrealistic assumptions about utility price increases to disguise this payment schedule as a lifetime cost savings.

And the huge issue is that if it's a back-heavy payment scheme: A future buyer will only see the heavier portion. Which makes your house less attractive to a buyer, and devalues your home, which also hurts any potential cost savings.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#25

Post by jpeg_hero »

It’s always seemed so obvious to me: electronics depreciate at a rapid rate, solar panels are electronics, do not finance electronics over 20 years and think it’s going to work.

For a 20 year lease, do you really want to be using a 19 year old system stuck on your roof ? Big clunky, weathered with spiderwebs. What does that look like?

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#26

Post by toomuchtodo »

sthu11182 wrote: post #11
wccrawford wrote: post #4

>It’s far more common for home sellers to transfer the lease to the buyer—Sunrun says 94 percent of customers do this—or to prepay the lease and leave the hardware on the roof for the next owner to use. I’ve been kicking myself ever since I learned about this latter option. It would have saved the estate around $12,000 and allowed us to support solar and get “free” electricity, even as Sunrun remained responsible for…

regarding the legal action: based on my recollection from real estate class in law school, failing to provide a free and clear title on a general warranty deed is a pretty straight forward victory. if i remember anything from that class, always get a general warranty deed (ie a deed with all the covenants) when buying a house.

Your class was correct (I just had to go through this very scenario this week, albeit not for solar, with a local title company transferring some property).

Never take action that is going to jeopardize free and clear title on your real estate.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#27

Post by mcguire »

"...or to prepay the lease and leave the hardware on the roof for the next owner to use. I’ve been kicking myself ever since I learned about this latter option. It would have saved the estate around $12,000 and allowed us to support solar and get “free” electricity, even as Sunrun remained responsible for maintenance and repairs."

Wouldn't the author have been able to take the price of buying out the lease off their taxes?

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#28

Post by shados »

Reading the article, the problem is that they used one of those companies with annoying business models to finance the solar panels somehow and you get some, but not all, of the benefits. People in the community I live in are pushing those models pretty hard.

Running the numbers, if you are privileged enough to have the money to just buy the damn panels and get them installed outright, you're way, way better off. I don't know if there's still good tax credits, but when I looked, they got you a good chunk of change right there. After that, solar panels pay for themselves in a pretty short amount of time if your electricity usage is high enough to take full advantage of them (eg: if you have a central hvac system or something), or have someone who will buy the surplus from you.

In my building, our power usage is way higher than we can get even if we covered the entire roof with panels, so it's pretty easy: put panels, reduce electricity cost, make up the money in a couple of years, don't deal with any third party aside for the installation.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#29

Post by toomuchtodo »

city41 wrote: post #20

We bought a house with TPO panels from SolarCity. It's been ... ok. Our monthly payment never goes up for the life of the lease and SolarCity sends us a check if the panels ever don't produce enough. They provide 100% of our electricity and we generate excess that the power company pays us a tiny amount for. If I could do it again I'd get a house without TPO panels. If for nothing else, just one less variable and thi…

1. (Edit: In most cases) Never pay for premium PV panels. The 10-20% premium only nets you an additional 1-2% in generation output.

2. Always get at least three quotes, using energysage: https://www.energysage.com

3. As a residential customer, never sign a PPA. Either pay cash or get a loan

4. Tesla solar customer service is wildly inconsistent. Even as a Tesla investor, I do not recommend them for solar.

Sorry for your poor Solar City experience.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#30

Post by zdragnar »

kryogen1c wrote: post #3

>Accounting for all these things, taking on Jug’s lease would translate to us paying at least $30 a month more. We’d lose money from Day 1 I'm unsure how I feel about this. $30 is a significant % of the electric bill, but is a very small % of the cost of owning a home. Didn't solar start as economically viable due to heavy government tax incentives? I'm ignorant of the data, but I thought solar was not fit for public…

Take that $30, stick it in a savings or investment. When solar prices go down, or utility prices go up, take the money you've saved up and then put it towards the purchase.

There's no point in throwing away money on a losing proposition, since in this case the homeowner wouldn't be the one to get the credit. As an additional bonus, your home will have newer, more efficient panels with a longer remaining estimated lifetime, so if you do end selling the house they'll add more value.

A solar install in a reasonably sunny climate can pay for itself over its lifespan, but you need to actually stay there the whole time, or hope that the added value to your house makes up for whatever your investment was.

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