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I Bought a House with Solar Panels

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Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#91

Post by CydeWeys »

It's sad that the resolution of the contractual dispute involved removing the solar panels. That's a lose-lose for everyone -- the company because they have to spend additional labor, the new owner because they would've preferred them to stay at a reasonable price, and of course the environment.

It's too bad the company couldn't come to terms somehow; surely accepting less money in a buy-out offer would have been better for them than having to come out and collect all of their equipment?

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#92

Post by walrus01 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
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 y…

If you are doing a self-owned grid tie installation and have limited space, premium panels CAN make a big difference in your cumulative kWh produced per month.

Let's say you have room to mount sixteen, 2.0x1.0 meter size (72-cell) panels.

320W (cheap panels) x 16 = 5120W STC rating

370W (more expensive panels) x 16 = 5920W STC rating.

In the above i'm comparing cheap polycrystalline panels from a not-very-big Chinese maker to a well known manufacturer using high quality 156mm monocrystalline cells from a reputable cell manufacturer.

Edit: Others in the same thread have pointed out there can be aesthetic considerations as well, a cheap panel will look like this:

http://energyinformative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sola...

A panel built from 72 x 156mm mono, black cells will look more like:

http://www.cirelectric.com/content/images/TouSilevoPanel.jpg

This can be a big monthly and yearly kWh-fed-back-into-grid difference.

Now, "super premium" panels will be a lot more expensive, like Sunpower, which might have a STC W per sq meter rating even higher (390W in the same space), but you'd be paying literally double per panel.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#93

Post by ip26 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
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 y…

1) premium (high power density) panels can still make sense if you have limited roof space to work with, especially limited south or west facing.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#94

Post by C1sc0cat »

michaelt wrote: post #53
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 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 environmen…

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.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#95

Post by shados »

ballenf wrote: post #44
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…

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.

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.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#96

Post by jpeg_hero »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #50
jpeg_hero wrote: post #25

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?

Solar panels are not electronics. Solar panels usually are warrantied to at least 80% of nameplace capacity out to 25 years. And there are hard caps on 1) PV efficiency (Shockley–Queisser) 2) insolation that are non-negotiable physics. If that system is clean and reasonably maintained, it will be 80% as good as they day you bought it (and probably 80% as good as a brand new system) in a quarter of a century.

True, you’ll still have your 80% but that will be compared to the state of the art at the time as a trade off. The production of contemporary panels should (hopefully) be much much better. Imagine the advances in the next 2 decades: higher efficiency, lighter weight, more module, standards we can’t conceive of.

Like the other poster in this thread said: sure your Athlon 500mhz is still runninnfine, even at 80% efficiency

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#97

Post by oarsinsync »

_ea1k wrote: post #80
macspoofing wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the cost of solar panels at the time you were considering them was what it was. Someone needed to pay for them. If that someone is Sunrun, they need to recoup those cost and make a return. You can be as creative as you want with the financing, that reality won't change. You could have gotten a bank loan too.

You aren't wrong, but, unfortunately a lot of consumers weren't aware of the real costs and were misled by companies offering these kinds of deals. I feel like it has done a lot of damage that is going to cost the residential solar industry a lot of money over the coming years.

> You aren't wrong, but, unfortunately a lot of consumers weren't aware of the real costs and were misled by companies offering these kinds of deals

This is the same model mobile phones have operated on in many countries for many years. Up front costs are subsidised by the carrier, who then proceeds to gouge you over the 12-24 month term to recoup that cost + a return.

> I feel like it has done a lot of damage that is going to cost the residential solar industry a lot of money over the coming years.

Possibly, given that the term lengths and financial costs are significantly higher. Unfortunately, the basic model itself is generally appreciated unless you've got the funds to pay up front. More unfortunate is that most people do not have the funds, so accept this trade off and move on.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#98

Post by ip26 »

nappy-doo wrote: post #17

A couple years ago, we purchased and had installed a solar system. In MA, there is an incentive program called SRECs, which is a program where the utilities have to buy MWH of produced electricity, and I can sell my MWH of produced electricity -- that's tracked as an SREC. I can sell SRECs for 10 years, I make about 5-6 a year, and they go for 200-300$. It makes the payoff on the system about 4 years, and ROIC about…

As far as I know, the SREC is a one-time lump sum for the 10 year period, so you're looking at one payment of $1,000-$1,800 right?

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#99

Post by floatrock »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #5

>One former Bay Area employee sent me a Sunrun training manual he said was current when he resigned in April 2017. It’s called “Power Play 2.0: The Guide to Successfully Sell Sunrun.” (The company confirmed its authenticity.) It instructs salespeople to sow distrust in and disdain for traditional utilities and appeal to customers’ emotions. Over 61 pages, pain is cited at least 31 times and fear at least a dozen. Whe…

Is this really all that different than putting segment.io onto your site, instrumenting every button click, and A/B testing which color or CTA phrasing results in the highest conversion rates?

Just yesterday, there was a front-page post here about the top pricing experiments you can run, full of neat behavioral psychology tricks like decoy pricing and anchoring.

Our industry does the same emotional manipulation... we just call it "growth hacking" instead of "sales scripts".

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#100

Post by oarsinsync »

sys_64738 wrote: post #60
michaelt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 environmen…

> 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.

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
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