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I Bought a House with Solar Panels

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Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#121

Post by laveur »

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…

I have to agree with some of the points you made but disagree on some others. I definitely agree that you should never use a PPA, get the loan or pay cash. But I have to say they whole process for getting my solar installed was really nice. I purchased my first home three years ago almost now and had solar installed back in the spring of 2017. It was on my short list of things to do as it seemed reasonable to do. I had one guy come to my door from a competitor but I was very put off by how pushy they where. So I called Solar City (Now Tesla) to talk to one of their sales people. They came on time and was very professional. In terms of financing it all I asked them to run the numbers for everything just to compare. When it came to the PPA I quickly realized that it basically meant I was replacing my normal provider, PG & E, with them for electricity. That didn't set well with me as I was gonna end up paying roughly the same for what I was currently paying. I had just bought the house so I didn't want to take out the loan. I had the cash so it seemed like the logical thing to do. It was nice and comforting to know that I had some time to decide how I wanted to pay for it, and that I could cancel practically up to the day they installed my system. Since then my power bill has been great. I paid just about 200 dollars for the first year since the day they turned it on. And I am on track to pay even less this year. As far as customer service. I don't have a huge opinion on that yet. I haven't needed to call them, though I probably should call and schedule my panels to get cleaned.

Probably the most interesting part of the whole process was paying nearly 10k dollars through PayPal. That was something interesting.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#122

Post by seanalltogether »

giarc wrote: post #76
CydeWeys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to do with solar panels to the extent that there's very little else that anyone would put on their house that uses a transferable contract. Solar panels are the most common instance in which anyone would run into this situation. I'm struggling to think of anything else, actually.

When we toured our home, the water softener system said rental on it. We inquired and the home owner confirmed the unit was purchased out right. So water softener systems is another potential example.

A water well was the first thing I thought of as a possible transferable lease, I could see septic systems possibly being leased too.

Edit- Some houses are also still heated by oil that has to be delivered on a routine basis and I could see that having a lease as well.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#123

Post by darkpuma »

ajross wrote: post #102
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…

> Not the company I want to be stuck in a 20-year contract with. As opposed to... your electrical utility?! Do people not remember the electricity crisis? It was an enormous, deliberately engineered market fixing scam that produced widespread power outages and a $40B windfall for the power producers financed by emergency state spending. Yet it was totally legal because they managed to get their lobbyists to fool the…

That's a massive false dichotomy. There are many ways to get solar panels other than Sunrun.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#124

Post by tacon »

dakna wrote: post #113
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…

The same reason why a lot of other industries and political parties use this playbook: It works more often than not. It is much easier to influence a decision by catering to emotions instead of reasoning.

The latest brain research pretty clearly shows that all decisions are emotional first, then layered on with the necessary reasoning in our conscious mind to satisfy us. In fact, I recall there is a study that people who have had the emotional center of their brain damaged or destroyed are simply incapable of making any decision at all.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#125

Post by figital »

I'd rather give excess power to my neighbors for free or just waste it on a giant spinning pinwheel than "sell" it back to the power company. No mention of local battery storage by the reporter or the "reported/reportee".

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

Pretty much all sales and advertising is built around creating a perception of pain and/or fear and offering relief for that.

That SunRun included that in their sales manual just indicates that they were addressing a sales force that was significantly staffed with sales novices who didn't already understand that, not that they were particularly nefarious.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#128

Post by Someone1234 »

floatrock wrote: post #119
Someone1234 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is really that different. What you're talking about is better connecting with a customer's needs and promoting the product's benefits. There's no losers in that situation, just a customer with more facts of which to make their decision. What that training manual is describing is exploiting someone's primal fears to manipulate them into something they wouldn't have otherwise done: apples and oranges. A better…

Tell me how A/B testing a button's color and placement "better connects with a customer's needs" over maximizing primal attentiveness circuits. Or how implementing decoy pricing and measuring relative price plan conversion funnels "promotes the product's benefits." Tell me how running multiple ad copies for multiple persona-tailored landing pages on a platform that's programmed for automatically rebalancing ad-spend…

I won't pretend it never happens. But you have to admit there's a contrast between abusing negative emotions (like fear, hate, anger, and distrust) and trying to connect with positive emotions (joy, interest, hope, enjoyment, etc).

If for no other reason that it is much harder to get someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do while prodding at the positive, but almost easy while prodding the negative. The only times when I can see positive emotions being abusable is sex (as a topic) and gambling, neither of which typically apply to the area we are discussing.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#129

Post by jrnichols »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #109
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…

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.

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

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#130

Post by secabeen »

_ea1k wrote: post #85
imgabe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

Unfortunately inverters fail, including the little microinverters (or optimizers with something like solaredge) on the panels themselves. This requires a qualified person to repair and possibly roof access as well. Depending on which panel it is, they may have to temporarily remove multiple panels to get to it. If the cost of labor is on the consumer, this can wipe out months of returns in a single visit. Of course,…

Yeah. Most inverters have multiple-year warranties, and often offer extended warranties out to about 10 years for the non-micro string inverters. You should still expect a full inverter upgrade/replacement every 10 years.
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