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I Bought a House with Solar Panels

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Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#271

Post by URSpider94 »

jandrese wrote: post #42
BeetleB wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Do these solar panel leasing companies include maintenance in the contract? Do they have guys going around to all of the installs to work on them? I'd always assumed that you would be responsible for all of the maintenance in either case, because that's usually how it works.

They include maintenance in the lease contract. Also, they are closely monitoring the output and will probably notice before you do if there’s a problem.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#272

Post by adrianhel »

justaguyhere wrote: post #261
rrauenza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got a quote from sun run - it made us uncomfortable how all of their numbers assumed ridiculous utility rate increases. And our gut said we should just wait and purchase instead. A few years later solar prices came down and we made a purchase with an installer whose main business was purchase, not lease. edit: I responded below, but my complaint isn't with their price -- it's their scare tactics and fuzzy break ev…

Customers of Sunrun and other companies must sign binding arbitration clauses, barring them from suing or joining in class actions This is how unchecked capitalism looks like. How can this be legal? How is it that so many companies (Google, Sun Run...) are able to get away with forcing their employees and customers to sign away their rights like this? This is in addition to the fact that even if someone has the balls…

Norwegian agreement law § 36:

An agreement may be wholly or partly set aside or amended to the extent that it would seem unreasonable or contrary to good business practice to make it applicable. The same applies to unilateral binding dispositions.

The decision takes into account not only the content of the agreement, the parties' position and the circumstances of the agreement's conclusion, but also to the subsequent circumstances and the circumstances in general.

The rules in the first and second paragraphs apply correspondingly when it would seem unreasonable to make the current commercial use or other contractual custom.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#273

Post by URSpider94 »

Syzygies wrote: post #147
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…

We bought panels outright with Solar City, end of 2007. Overall, we're satisfied. We didn't get exactly the rig we wanted. As a typical HN reader, I learned more about solar than their customer-facing staff, and had to periodically be put on the phone with a techie they usually insulate from customers. One problem was working around a revered shade tree we had no intention of hacking to optimize solar yield in late a…

One big reason I didn’t go with Solar City is that they install DC systems, where all of the panels are wired in series DC down to a big monolithic inverter. With such a system, shading is a problem, as you mention - one shaded panel will cut current for the whole string. You are also lucky that the plumber didn’t kill himself or burn down your house - DC systems often run hundreds of volts, and DC can sustain an arc with as little as 80V (http://www.acsolarwarehouse.com/news/solar-fires-dc-arc-faul...).

AC systems have micro-inverters for each panel or panel cluster, so DC is never transmitted over large distances or at high voltage. Because each panel is independent, shading only affects the output of the shaded panel. You can also replace damaged panels or add to the system later without having to match the characteristics of the existing panels.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#274

Post by passivepinetree »

briandear wrote: post #267
alasdair_ wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why can't the business suffer losses instead of everyone pay subsidies? Because the old model of coal power plants makes people pay in other ways (pollution). Subsidies are reasonable if it means that the negative externalities are diminished.

So let’s subsidize nuclear instead. Far more efficient than millions of people buying solar panels. Properly designed nuclear is proven technology.

You’re creating a bit of a false dichotomy here. There’s absolutely methods and reason to subsidize both forms of power. Both would be a vast improvement over coal/petroleum.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#275

Post by itronitron »

URSpider94 wrote: post #269
itronitron wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want it to add value to your house because then you will end up paying higher property taxes on a higher appraised value. The benefit of solar can be stated to a prospective buyer as X dollars less on utility bills each year.

Huh?? I buy a house for $100k. I put $15k of solar panels on it. I go to sell it a year later, and sell it for $100k. That is what it means for solar panels not to add value - I just lost my $15k investment. Incidentally, that appears to be the case for residential solar in CA. It doesn’t factor in appreciably to the price of a home.

Your neighbor buys a house for $100k, doesn't install solar and then sells their house a year later for $85k.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#276

Post by Nanzikambe »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #40
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'…

Have you owned a multi-kW inverter before? Because if you know one that is mostly free of drama I would love to know the brand! Solar photovoltaic systems are not as maintenance free as one might wish. They still make a ton of financial sense if you own them outright, but inverters and critter damage to wiring can be unwelcome surprise costs.

Victron's Multiplus and Quattro are drama free. I buried and conduited/sealed all my cabling and had zero issues.

Added bonus: if you use them with a CCGX and are comfortable with MQQT and/or Python there is literally nothing you can't control, automate or visualise with them. The CCGX itself is arm + linux and mostly open sourced https://www.victronenergy.com/live/open_source:start

The downsides are: 1) price but imho you get what you pay for many times over. 2) veconfigure for the multiplus itself is windows only, but runs fine in Wine on Linux and Mac

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#277

Post by richmarr »

briandear wrote: post #265
justaguyhere wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers of Sunrun and other companies must sign binding arbitration clauses, barring them from suing or joining in class actions This is how unchecked capitalism looks like. How can this be legal? How is it that so many companies (Google, Sun Run...) are able to get away with forcing their employees and customers to sign away their rights like this? This is in addition to the fact that even if someone has the balls…

So don’t buy from Sunrun. It’s that simple. That’s how capitalism works. If they ask you to sign something as a condition of using their service, simply decline and they lose the sale.

> So don’t buy from Sunrun. It’s that simple. That’s how capitalism works.

That's how laissez-faire capitalism works, within bounds.

Capitalism just means private ownership and trade; it doesn't dictate, or even imply, anything about regulation.

In more regulated capitalist economies legal systems are quite happy declaring 'unfair' contracts to be void. For example in the UK a single unfair clause can invalidate the entire contract.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#278

Post by eloisant »

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.

A better system would be to offer buyout of the panels when the house sells.

For example if they decide that the system needs to be bought for 20k when the house gets sold, then when you want to sell your house you just bump the price 20k to account for the panels buyout.

There, no lien to the home, and no confusion from the buyers thinking they get a house with solar panels when they're just getting a house where somebody else's panels are installed.

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#279

Post by tomp »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #243
tomp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Electric car subsidies were just that, subsidies (i.e. Tesla cars were cheaper).

How are you defining subsidy? Tesla cars were not cheaper at the price level, a buyer in 2018 and before just gets a tax credit of $7,500 upon tax filing.

Ah, interesting, I never realized!

Re: I Bought a House with Solar Panels

#280

Post by tomp »

rtkwe wrote: post #222
tomp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Electric car subsidies were just that, subsidies (i.e. Tesla cars were cheaper).

No they were still structured as tax credits. https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicl...

Ah, interesting, I never realized!
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