Leased solar systems are failing across America

A little bit of sweat equity is the ONLY way to do solar installs. Even if you hire other people to do the installation, sourcing the panels, the hardware, and your own electrician will save tens of thousands of dollars.

If you let a general contractor like SunRun, Tesla, or Solar City do the sourcing, you will either get:

a) The older generation equipment for top of the line prices.

b) Top of the line equipment for obscene prices.

What did you use as your discount rate and inflation expectation to compare 23,000 of todays nominal dollars to 60,000 of future nominal dollars?

How many kW?

> door-to-door sales people

The harder they work, the more lucrative the contract for them AKA you're getting a bad deal.

Pretty much like 99% of advertising: the more they advertise, the more expensive they will be compared to the competition.

In today's world, you just have to assume that any door-to-door sales must be a scam.

Yeah, can confirm, don’t do it. Ours is performing as intended but only after months and months of bullshit and having to get half our roof redone (which they paid for, but god that was annoying) because they messed it up horribly on initial install.

I’m never doing rooftop again, and if I do solar, it’ll be ground level and I’ll do everything myself but the scariest parts of the electrical work.

[edit] oh and it’s connected through some Internet of Shit device that I’m sure will stop working in a few years and cause all kinds of trouble in the replacement. If I’d known it wasn’t just gonna be a big on/off switch, I’d not have done it.

I see these installs on roofs not facing south and wonder if the installers know something I don't know or if they are paid to install cells, not to optimize cell utilization.

According to reddit:

* Never go with a power purchase agreement (PPA) or lease.

* Solar loans are not really worth it (super high interest rate compared to home loans).

* Installing yourself is doable, but as with all other contractors, best to compare installers. This requires some research beforehand.

My rush journey to meet NEM2 date earlier this year in CA: 1) researching components (panels/inverters) based on /r/solar subreddit 2) picked a popular inverter manufacturer (Enphase) and went to their "installers" page 3) spammed 20-30 installers and compared the ability for them to meet the date as well as cost for the sizing/components I wanted 4) selected one installer and let them do the install. Before getting to (4) I did get a lot of "what you're asking for doesn't make sense" which I respected.

Certain parts of the US establishment put enormous cultural weight on preserving the right of businesses to take advantage of consumers under the theory that in a free market the information will spread organically and consumers will punish those businesses.

It doesn't hurt that it's effectively legal for businesses to bribe politicians (as long as nobody is dumb enough to keep 6-figure sums of cash in their houses and get their wives no-show jobs for those businesses).

Along the same lines, it reminded me of Denis Hope's lunar real estate shenanigans

https://whyy.org/segments/who-owns-the-moon/

Too bad you aren't living in a nine planet system anymore.

Whether you lease or buy, don't settle for anything less than a full complement of planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, meteors, and comets. You should also have it inspected first. You want to be sure it will last and won't get sucked into a supermassive blackhole.

I would love some more information if you don’t mind sharing.

I too would like more info.

Well, it is systems so not one for US but anyone living in US can have their own solar system.

>"It can’t possibly be the case that US has its own solar system."

Have you heard of Manifest Destiny?

Likewise. I thought it would be about some kind of "name a star" service, but now you get not only a star, but all the celestial bodies in orbit, too. The linked article says, "Rooftop Solar Power..." which is much more clear.

They're supposed to last 30 years. So maybe it's too early to tell.

The demand for solar in the US is high, but number of skilled laborers willing to be on a roof is very low. Last year I called almost 40 installers, every one of them was booked out for at least 6 months, some for a year. So, they can demand a premium.

Cost of hardware is also a lot higher. I was able to get panels for about $1/watt, iirc in AU it's closer to $0.45/watt (not installed, just the hardware).

Factoring in the exchange rate, that's maybe half the the price I paid for a similar system here in the US less than a year ago. The thing that is hurting people is leasing. Basically to avoid people having to front that much cash, there are a lot of people who will install roof-top solar for no-money down- and a 30 year lease on the hardware on top of your own house. Then if you sell the house, now you have to get the new buyer to assume the lease, and the hedge funds who are primarily running the leasing operation are famously bad at running their back-office stuff (because that costs money to do right, but doesn't give them a single extra dollar). When we were looking into this we saw too many horror stories around leasing and decided we had to buy, which has worked out great for us- kicked our monthly power bill during the expensive season from >$500 to <$200, and the house is actually more comfortable than it was before.

The recent changes in the Inflation Reduction Act, offering a 30% tax rebate on all roof-top solar purchases, really changes the calculations and makes leasing much less attractive, so there will probably be many fewer of them going forward. But that also means that there will be less money for the hedge funds that have invested in the leasing, and they will probably make life even worse for the people with existing leases.