Lease vs. Buy?

[PerfectReign]

I am a complete newbie to this whole solar idea. The only solar systems I've built have been for crystal radios.

I live outside of Los Angeles. I figure I get 10+ hours of direct sunlight per day. It rains or is cloudy maybe fifteen days a year.

My current electric usage runs about 1100 kWh per month or 37 per day. (This is according to my provider, Edison.)

About two years ago, I looked into a lease option from Solar City.

Now I'm looking into either lease or buy options. I looked at the lease/buy option from Sungevity (http://www.sungevity.com/). I'm also getting a quote from a local contractor who installs solar systems.

The local contractor is quoting me $35,250 for a 3 kWh system, including all installation, inverter and panels. (The panels are either Sony or Sanyo.)

The Sungevity is quoting $27,245 for a 3.5 kWh system, also including installation. (The panels are BP 125 watt.)

Sungevity also has a lease program for 10 years.

I'm assuming a new inverter would be needed after 15 or so years, correct? (The warranty on the inverter for either purchase option is 10 years.)


My question is this - what do I need to look for in lease vs. buy? What have your experiences been? I searched here but didn't find any "lease" threads.

[Sunking]

Where are you coming up with 10 hours sun, and a 3.5 Kw system from?

You do not get a 10 Sun Hour day. No place on earth gets that much solar insolation. In Los Angeles your summer peak is 6.6 hours, winter 4.2 hours and yearly average of 5.6. For a grid tied system you use the yearly average and for you that is 5.6 Sun Hours

A grid tied system is roughly 80% efficient. So to Net 0 usage over a year with a daily average of 37 Kwh you would need a [37,000 wh / .8] / 5.6 h = 8258 watt solar panel array, or 8.25 Kw system. At 3.5 would only generate about 42% of your electricity.

As for the lease, I have found none that are a good deal for the customer. They will take all your rebates, credits, FIT, and all other incentives. You will get stuck with the bills.

IMHO the only way to do solar and come out ahead is to build a system with Net 0, and pay cash up front. You do that and in 8 to 10 years you will break even maybe. Problem is will you still be there in 10 years to receive 1 penny benefit. Otherwise take the money and invest it. In 10 years you will double or triple it.

Being in Ca you are some what fortunate as your neighbors pick up most of the tab, and you get some of the best solar insolation in the country

[PerfectReign]

Thank you.

I find your posts informative.

I figured I get 10 hours from my own calculation. I did look on the PVWatts website, which then gave me an average of 6.3 kWh/m2/day.


I was thinking same about the Lease, but wondering about the inverter. Looks like the cost is roughly $1500-$2000 for inverters. I'm assuming they last 10-15 years?

My goal is to keep me out of the upper tiers for power. If the cost differential isn't that much for moving to mostly off-grid, I'd be even more thrilled.

[Sunking]

I figured I get 10 hours from my own calculation. I did look on the PVWatts website, which then gave me an average of 6.3 kWh/m2/day.

That translate to 6.3 Sun Hours. The number I quoted you is from NREL which is where PV watts gets it data. 6.3 sounds too high, but possible I guess. Sounds more like Tucson or Phoenix which has the highest Insolation in the lower 48.

[PerfectReign]

Ahh, National Renewable Energy Labratory - http://www.nrel.gov/

[Sunking]

Here is the link I used. Just click on your state, give it a minute to download then scroll down to your city.

[Mike90250]

1) product costs the same
2) you end up paying for it anyway.
3) I always buy. Lease only spreads your $$ out to several other people, and you still own nothing. If you have a clever accountant, high income that needs shelter, maybe a lease works, but seldom to your advantage.

[russ]

LA annual average insolation is just over 5 - not more

People get confused with the sun being visible as compared to being usable. The thin film types are trying to exploit this by making some rather wild claims about how many more hours their system functions.

The lease is nothing more than a method for the money boys to go after the subsidies and incentives. It will be interesting when they start to fail due to lousy management - that will happen! They have no product except a financial package that depends on government handouts - not a stable business plan when the government is busy trying to go broke.

[PerfectReign]

It is alive!

Well, I went ahead and took the plunge. After looking at 3Kw - 6Kw systems and my tiered (as well as a potential for TOD) usage, I went with an install containing 12 panels. The panels are all Sharp 240-watt and I am using Enphase micro inverters instead of one monolithic inverter.

The installer hasn't put the monitoring in yet so I don't know exactly what I'm producing at any given time. Six panels are on my southeast-facing house and six are on my southwest-facing garage.

I'm happy so far. I recorded the time for the digital dial to spin around without the solar and having the pool pump on. That took 18 seconds on average (six samples). I also recorded it with the solar on. That took on average 45 seconds. (Just to be sure I sampled with teh solar on first then flipped it off and sampled so that I wasn't having any "warm up" issues.

Here's a shot of the house with six of the panels in the back. As far as I can tell there are no shadows over the panels during the day.




Here's a shot of my digital power meter running backwards (this is for the hour or so prior to the pool pump starting.)

[russ]

@ PerfectReign - Well done and congrats on your new system!

Thanks for sharing,
Russ

[PerfectReign]

I know this thread is aging, but I wanted to keep it on the same topic.

I just had my new net metering panel installed last week. I'm finding that I'm looking at 15 kWh per day now instead of 25 kWh per day. That's a good thing. Can't wait to see what the first full bill will look like in March.


Since I went with the enPhase micro-inverters, I can monitor my system. I know they charge, and I'm not sure I want to pony up. Here's what the enPhase website looks like for my system:



I'm currently generating between 11 and 13 kWh per day.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the enPhase micro-inverter communication gateway device that is the bridge between the panels and the website. I then ran nmap against it and found it runs Linux with a small web server. It has ports 80 and 22 open. I have yet to figure out the root password to the console, but the web interface is easy to get at. I just opened my firewall on my router to port 8042 (which may change) and I now have instant access. I'm thinking I could write a simple script to capture this data and generate the same types of reports the that website has. Maybe not with the cool graphics.

[ionized]

lease vs. buy?

I think that accelerated depreciation used to make it a good thing to lease a system to someone else. That accelerated depreciation for renewable energy systems, I think, has gone away. I am not sure about that going away part. That means that if you had a friend that wanted a photovoltaic system on his home too, you could each build a system and lease them to one another. You could write off the cost of the system on your taxes in five years, IIRC.

[KRenn]

lol.......ouch

I am a complete newbie to this whole solar idea. The only solar systems I've built have been for crystal radios.

I live outside of Los Angeles. I figure I get 10+ hours of direct sunlight per day. It rains or is cloudy maybe fifteen days a year.

My current electric usage runs about 1100 kWh per month or 37 per day. (This is according to my provider, Edison.)

About two years ago, I looked into a lease option from Solar City.

Now I'm looking into either lease or buy options. I looked at the lease/buy option from Sungevity (http://www.sungevity.com/). I'm also getting a quote from a local contractor who installs solar systems.

The local contractor is quoting me $35,250 for a 3 kWh system, including all installation, inverter and panels. (The panels are either Sony or Sanyo.)

The Sungevity is quoting $27,245 for a 3.5 kWh system, also including installation. (The panels are BP 125 watt.)

Sungevity also has a lease program for 10 years.

I'm assuming a new inverter would be needed after 15 or so years, correct? (The warranty on the inverter for either purchase option is 10 years.)


My question is this - what do I need to look for in lease vs. buy? What have your experiences been? I searched here but didn't find any "lease" threads.

Wow, here in Arizona you could get that 3.5k for less than $20,000......strong price gouging in California.

[jacksonchelsey]

Though buying is one time investment..its worth when the object is solar panels...you save a lot of money and its energy efficient...and thanks for this information OP it was very informative

[russ]

The leasing companies have every reason to jack up the price they use as a basis.

Those can easily be phony numbers to allow extra recapture at future dates.

The entire leasing program is bean counters playing with government money.