I Bought a House with Solar Panels • Hacker News Board

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#151

Post by brandon272 » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #117

This reminded me of a casual conversation with an acquaintance about how they sold their home, with (older) solar panels and had some sort of agreement where they still got paid for the money generated by the panels. It sounded odd, as in; who would buy a house where something on the roof was generating income for the previous owner? - Wouldn't you (the buyer) just buy them out? No idea how this was structured - anyo…

Sounds like either an agreement with the new owner that involved a price reduction on the home in exchange for the continued income. Or something totally shady!

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#152

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #118

diafygi wrote: post #19

Not trying to discredit or de-emphasize the conclusion, but the ironic thing here is that the utility cost escalation rates that Sunrun had initially calculated were likely based off of pre-solar boom tariff increases. As renewables have started becoming competitive (both utility-scale and distributed), utilities have been able to avoid building more expensive fossil-based power plants and transmission lines as quick…

I'm curious how solar could have put a dent in overall power production needs as peek energy usage comes around 6-8pm when solar panels are producing almost no power. And since utilities need to plan their production around peak usage far more than around overall usage, has solar really done that much to lower utility production requirements?

> I'm curious how solar could have put a dent in overall power production needs as peek energy usage comes around 6-8pm when solar panels are producing almost no power.

I'm pretty sure the usage peak period is more like noon to six p.m. The grid demand peak is now 6-8 p.m., because of customer-site solar.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#153

Post by eecc » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #51

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.

No, someone did not need to pay for them. That's not how the market works. If no one is willing to pay the listed price then the product goes unsold. Sunrun has no right to paying customers at any arbitrary price level, same as any other business.

And that’s why markets end up stuck in local minima. Unless you consider government subsidies, which is a way to collectively share the burden of overcoming temporary obstacles.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#154

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #141

dragonwriter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Pretty much all sales and advertising is built around creating a perception of pain and/or fear and offering relief for that. No, pretty much all sales and advertising is built around finding some problem the customer has that the product or service being sold solves (or solves better than their current solution). But there's no need for the problem to be pain and fear--let alone pain and fear that is a perception…

> No, pretty much all sales and advertising is built around finding some problem the customer has that the product or service being sold solves

“Finding a problem” in sales is very commonly a euphemism for creating the perception of a problem that the customer did not perceive before the sellers efforts.

> But there's no need for the problem to be pain and fear

“Pain” (outside of it's narrow use for physical pain) is a synonym for having an actual current problem, fear is having a concern about a potential future problem. The distinction you propose is vacuous.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#155

Post by filesystemdude » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

I evaluated solar cells for my home, and ultimately decided against because I probably get more total energy saving from the current passive solar of having huge south-facing windows and an oak tree in front of my house - free heat in the winter, shaded in the summer. For solar electric to work, the oak tree would have to go.

That said, central issue mentioned in this article aside (which is legit concerning), cost wasn't really an issue I spent much time worrying about. Am I the only person more interested in giving the middle finger to my corrupt utility provider and their coal-centered power generation strategy than whether I came out a few bucks ahead or behind in 20 years? I suspect a lot of people who install solar have similar motivations.

But that in itself can be a problem, too. The thing that concerns me about household solar is that it's a bit like owning a Prius - it becomes a status symbol for people more interested in _appearing_ green and assuaging their guilt than actual concern about their total carbon footprint. Take a vacation to Hawaii once a year and you'll probably knock off every single bit of good you did for the planet.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#156

Post by fbonetti » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #148

An important take away from this article is simply the perils of home buying. People usually only do it once or twice in their life (I have done it twice so far) and it's really easy to make a very expensive mistake. Imagine this article with another property problem instead of Sun Run: a mother-in-law unit with a tenant, a disputed property line, a requirement to retrofit the house to make it earthquake proof, illeg…

> An important take away from this article is simply the perils of home buying ... it's really easy to make a very expensive mistake.

This article was interesting but I don't think the author was at any risk of making a financial mistake. At the end of the day, Sunrun had a lien on the property. The title company and the lender would not allow the sale to go through unless the Jug estate was able to deliver a clear title. If the title company somehow missed the fact that Sunrun had a lien on the property, the author's title insurance would cover the damages.

> Check everything out with true third parties and be ready to back out.

The insurance company, title company, lender, and home inspector are already highly incentivized to ensure that the property isn't a dud.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#157

Post by 4ec0755f5522 » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #99

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…

I'd love to read this but can't find it-- link/title? (I did use search but could not find anything).

edit: I think this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19133394

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#158

Post by crankylinuxuser » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #128

floatrock wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onl…

"Did you know you're a horrible looking person. You're ugly, and we can see your pimples. And your eyelashes look like thin straw. And your mouth and lips look dry and colorless. Your hair is a tangled dry-ends mess. But our products can make you look human again."

This is what women are subjected to day in and out by all the media targeting them. They're told how ugly they are, how inhuman they look, how they stink, their disgusting bodies (periods), and more that I know I dont realize being a man.

And only the company's products - well, they never make you awesome. They make you whole from ugliness and disgust.

Lo and behold, we see the same strategies being used in this realm too. It's fear, uncertainty, doubt, and self-loathing; and only that company can save you... for a 20 year hunk of flesh.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#159

Post by yumraj » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #114

yumraj wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which company did you buy from? Which panels are they using? LG, Panasonic, Chinese? I may be in the market soon..

I went with Clean Solar in San Jose. All companies I got quotes from were very similar; I wanted to go with a small/local company, but the smallest company I talked with turned out to be shady/on the verge of criminal, and for me, Clean Solar struck the right balance of being local and big enough to have tons of great reviews and presumably good financial resources, but not huge. The SunRun guy I talked to was also g…

Thanks, very helpful. I do prefer local in general. If you don't mind, would love the name of your sales person..

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#160

Post by skybrian » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #87

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…

It is funny because we get cold called by these folks probably twice a year, and once a rep came up to our house and wanted to tell us about solar, so I gave them a short tour of the 5KW system we installed 15 years ago. The one that has literally paid for itself (about half way through year 11) based on actual generation and power consumption statistics. It would have paid for itself sooner except that PG&E has twic…

Even without explicit subsidies, it seems like rooftop solar is still getting hidden subsidies? If homeowners were paid wholesale rates for the power they provide, with prices based on the spot market, would any of it make sense financially?