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Comment by isanengineer | Hacker News Reader

I worked in the solar industry for years and this is a very good summary of the residential install process from the customer side.

I’ll also second one of the main points of the author: do NOT get a solar lease. Either finance it through a solar loan or pay cash. A good solar company will not push you into a lease. If they try, talk to someone else.

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Also should be noted to get multiple estimates, even though that's kind of common sense. I had them vary wildly, where the most expensive one was literally twice as much as the cheapest one.

I got three estimates. Huge variety in price. All three companies sent someone out to survey the house. Two were very friendly salesmen who took photos of the roof and told me how much I would save, but couldn't answer technical questions. The third company sent out an engineer, who came into the house and talked me through where the inverter would be best situated, how the batteries worked, the benefits of a diverter etc. Third company instilled the most confidence and they were also the cheapest. Went with them.

Why are the leases so problematic? If you don't have the funds nor credit score to finance it, why not just rent out the roof space so to speak? Any return you get from it is better than nothing.

Solar leases are the problematic ones (where you pay a percent of the energy you generated). It sounds like a good deal, but the rates increase yearly and the compounded cost doesn't end up being worth it. The author was cash-flow positive on a fixed-rate lease immediately and it doesn't come with a contract with a 3rd-party provider, although I guess that depends on how much sunlight you have.

We got a house in San Diego near the bottom of the last market (2012) and I was a medical resident at the time with two school age children. The previous owner had installed electric everything (even had to get a larger trunk line run and breaker panel). So our electric bill was a little nuts, randomly hitting tier 3 pricing and landing $350+ electric bills. For a household with negligible marginal income, that was unpleasant. We had 0 capital to play with but switching to solar was a no brainer. Even the lease is cheaper than paying PG&E.

Would I do it that way again? Probably not. But I have more wiggle room now.

> hitting tier 3 pricing and landing $350+ electric bills

I just wanna chime in and add: PG&E got rid of the third tier (unsure when) and, in the Bay Area, we're looking at around $0.35-$0.40/kWh at the upper end of the rate schedule (plus an explosion in natural gas prices on the West Coast). $350+ electric bills are pretty much now the norm for anyone who wants to heat their house up much past 60°F.

> Even the lease is cheaper than paying PG&E

SDG&E provides electricity in San Diego

Hah! Indeed. We moved to Mountain View and that property is now a rental. Point stands.

So why wouldn't you get a lease now?

A lease just doesn't make financial sense for a long-term (likely permanent) asset.

My understanding is the leases are a challenge when you want to sell the house. New buyers would have to also agree to the lease's terms or you have to pay to break the lease and remove them.

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