The Pros and Cons of Solar City PPA or Lease

Where is the popcorn smilie

The forum does not have one, but you could use this instead:

popcorn.jpg

Lol

Hey....that was mine

This sounds awesome....could you please post up a comparison of your system to an outright cash purchase with the Federal Tax Credits flowing through to the buyer on the outright system. For the sake of argument maybe you could use a 3% inflation factor in your calculations on the energy costs in the future and then for the sake of comparison say that you do this in CA with the current net metering agreements that are available.......I think that everyone here would like to see in hard numbers the true value of your program.......please get back to us with that when you get a chance

Excellent idea!! I look forward to the seeing the data!!

I expect this link from another thread should be added to round out the discussion



Maybe the OP should address why so many people are having so many issue with Solar City.

Trust me we'll never see this guy again

Maybe or maybe not.

I have no issue with someone offering help and understanding how their company works.

I just won't tolerate someone using this Forum to advertise their company.

I will also try to help someone understand that posting their private emails and phone numbers can hurt them due to other spammers out there.

I've been lurking on these boards for awhile, and I don't particularly care to sell anyone on here so not to give the guy a hard time however..

1. Generally all reps are purely comissioned based, that's our incentive to get people to bite.

2. Buying your system will always be better than a lease or a PPA.

3. A lease WILL put a mechanical lien against the house and so when you try to sell the property it'll be a huge pain. (don't ever go with a lease)

4. PPA is some sort of technicality unicorn, where it doesn't put a lien against the home and depending on who you look through is always a better deal than a lease.

I read somewhere that someone was comparing a 1bog (dunno the company) offering a 12kwh system at a cheaper rate per kwh than solar citys 8.5kw etc, the issue with this is even though you have a cheaper rate, you're paying way more for electricity you may not be using, in which you'll then (depending on the state) sell it back to your utility provider at a pathetic 4 cents per kwh.

Almost all companies will offer the same deal currently. In california, for Vivint it's a 15 cent PPA at a 2.9% increase per year. Solar City probably has almost identical format.

The only time I truly see this being a great deal is for anyone in PGE turf as you're paying through the nose for electricity and currently they're attempting to squash Solar incentives because it's eating into their profit margins. I can't vouch for the other utility company costs etc.


so hijacking this guys thread, i'll answer questions to the best of my ability. I suggest you always shop around regardless of how convincing the rep sounds.

happy solar hunting!

Awesome thanks for stepping in.....could you please answer my pervious question with the specific numbers based on the assumptions I put forth......really looking forward to seeing the numbers side by side.

Welcome

I've never seen anyone announce their intention to hijack a thread.

Solar city just came to VT. Sounds like they're not doing so well here. They had plans of doing 100 jobs a month... Don't think they know how many (few) people live here, plus there's a lot of competition.

So I was going to post an actual CAD design with all the numbers, but I also don't want to get in trouble so I'll post a few things.


There is part of the contract that states if you need to buy us out for whatever reason it's at 5 dollars per watt, so the valuation of the system we build is X amount and depreciates 5% per year installed.

This CAD design states that a 12kwh system is 60k, this is what we send off to the city for permiting etc etc.

A 12kwh, 60k value system paid outright in cash minus a 30% rebate the owner gets to pay 42k. I've included the permit costs for the sake of this. You've got this for life, you're not paying a dime more for electric usage, except for all the wonderous infrastructure fees PGE is dumping on you. So we're clear, the panels have a warranty of 20 years. Now depending on the inverters used, their warranty is for about 10 years. (I've already met someone who has had to pay to replace their inverters on a system they bought, yeah it sucks)

Presuming everything is hunky dory, 42k over 20 years is $2,100 a year for your panels. If you never left PGE's tier 1 you're looking at the current rate of $1,980 dollars for your electricity only, but that's not including the tax, so you're actually far better off with your system you've bought.


So I was thinking about placing wonderful excel sheets about the increase but i'm incredibly lazy so our rate for the first year is 15 cents. Times that by 15X1.029 and that'll give the successive cost each year.

2nd year 15.435C
3rd year 15.88C
4th year 16.34C

at the 20 year mark it'll be 25.8 cents

So tier 4 is currently 33 cents for PG&E.

So basically, as i've stated, buying your system outright is the way to go, if you don't have the cash and you're having to get a loan or what not, you can figure out what a modest loan percentage is and add that to your calculations. The idea is that if you're not paying anything upfront, what could that 42k gone to? whether it was a investment in a low risk stock or what not. That's the angle we go with, you're not paying for the system, you pay for the electricity the panels generate, and you're then beholden to those stipulations.

it would take 4 years before it came to the current pricing by PGE and I've already been informed (you can look it up as well) that they're changing a few things. 1. PGE is making it harder to save money via solar through lobbyists. It'll take effect i believe in 2017. They're changing the tier system to a two tier, tier 1 is 17cents? tier 2 will be 28cents..

What the solar companies are offering (well vivint is) no money down, buying a fixed rate for electricty and you'll know how much you'll be paying for the next twenty years. Which is far more reliable than what PGE is currently doing, if you look at the rate increases for the past year and the proposed bills.

There are snags with any contracts, basically to be candid, if you default and stop paying for electricity we have options available to us to get the money for the panels we installed on the house.

I hope this helps.